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FISHERMAN'S LUCK 




"An encourager of indolence." 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 



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BY 



HENRY VAX DYKE 



Now I conclude that not only in Pkysicke, but likewise 
in sundry more certainearts,fortu?ie hath great share 
in them? 

M. de Montaigne : Divers Events. 






• . > * > » -», * 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBXER'S SONS 

1899 




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FIRST COPY, 



Copyright, 1899, by 
Charles Scribner"'s Sons. 

TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 




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DEDICATION 

TO MY LADY 
GRAYGOWN 



HERE 

is the basket ; 
I bring it home to you. 
There are no great fish in it. 
But perhaps there may be a little one, here or 
there, to your taste. And there are a few 
shining pebbles from the bed of the brook, and 
a few ferns from the cool, green woods, and a 
few wild flowers from the places that you remem- 
ber. I would fain console you, if I could, for 
the hardship of having married an angler : a man 
who relapses into his mania with the return of 
every spring, and never sees a little river with- 
out wishing to fish in it. But after all, we have 
had good times together as we have followed the 
stream of life towards the sea. And we have 
passed through the dark days without losing 
heart, because we were comrades. So let this 
book tell you one thing that is certain. 
In all the life of your fisherman 
the best piece of luck 
is just 

YOU. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

TO FACE 
PAGE 

'* An encourager of indolence " . Frontispiece 
11 The little suburban boys with their strings 

and pin-hooks " 8 

" The SITUATION WAS not without its embar- 
rassments " 44 

" Nature gave me her silent answer " . 76 
"Falling in love in the good old-fashioned 

way " 104 

11 Walton was a man so peaceful and contented " 132 

11 Lorn a Doone's brook " 146 

"The bewitched crags of the Romsdal" . . 160 

"Skogstad is a solitary farm-house" . . 164 

"The whole Franconia range of hills" . . 174 

"a little river in labrador" .... 222 

" The little friendship-fire " .... 226 

" Come to anchor, little boatie "... 238 



CONTENTS 









Page 


I. Fisherman's Luck 1 


II. The Thrilling Moment 






33 


III. Talkabiltty .... 






47 


IV. A Wild Strawberry . 






71 


V. Lovers and Landscape 






91 


VI. A Fatal Success . 






107 


VII. Fishing in Books . 






125 


/ILL A Norwegian Honeymoon . 






149 


IX. Who owns the Mountains ? 






171 


X. A Lazy, Idle Brook . 






181 


XI. The Open Fire 






205 


XII. A Slumber Song . 






235 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 



She could not conceive a game wanting- the sprightly infusion of chance, 
— the handsome excuses of good fortune." — Charles Lamb: Essays 
of Elia. 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the 
quality of the greetings that belong to certain 
occupations ? 

There is something about these salutations in 
kind which is singularly taking and grateful to 
the ear. They are as much better than an ordi- 
nary "good day" or a flat "how are you?" as 
a folk-song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better 
than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. 
They have a spicy and rememberable flavour. 
They speak to the imagination and point the way 
to treasure-trove. 

There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for 
all they are so free and easy — the dignity of 
independence, the native spirit of one who takes 
for granted that his mode of living has a right 
to make its own forms of speech. I admire a 
man who does not hesitate to salute the world in 
the dialect of his calling. 

How salty and stimulating, for example, is the 
sailorman's hail of "Ship ahoy!' : It is like a 
breeze laden with briny odours and a pleasant 

3 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

dash of spray. The miners in some parts of Ger- 
many have a good greeting for their dusky trade. 
They cry to one who is going down the shaft, 
" Glitch auf! " All the perils of an under- 
ground adventure and all the joys of seeing the 
sun again are compressed into a word. Even 
the trivial salutation which the telephone has 
lately created and claimed for its peculiar use — 
" Hello, hello ! " — seems to me to have a kind 
of fitness and fascination. It is like a thorough- 
bred bulldog, ugly enough to be attractive. 
There is a lively, concentrated, electric air about 
it. It makes courtesy wait upon dispatch, and 
reminds us that we live in an age when it is 
necessary to be wide awake. 

I have often wished that every human em- 
ployment might evolve its own appropriate greet- 
ing. Some of them would be queer, no doubt ; 
but at least they would be an improvement on 
the wearisome iteration of " Good-evening " and 
" Good-morning," and the monotonous inquiry, 
"How do you do?" — a question so meaning- 
less that it seldom tarries for an answer. Under 
the new and more natural system of etiquette, 
when you passed the time of day with a man you 
would know his business, and the salutations of 
the market-place would be full of interest. 

As for my chosen pursuit of angling (which I 
follow with diligence when not interrupted by 

4 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

less important concerns), I rejoice with every 
true fisherman that it has a greeting all its own 
and of a most honourable antiquity. There is 
no written record of its origin. But it is quite 
certain that since the days after the Flood, when 
Deucalion 

" Did first this art invent 
Of angling, and his people taught the same," 

two honest and good-natured anglers have never 
met each other by the way without crying out, 
"What luck?" 

Here, indeed, is an epitome of the gentle art. 
Here is the spirit of it embodied in a word and 
paying its respects to you with its native accent. 
Here you see its secret charms unconsciously 
disclosed. The attraction of angling for all the 
ages of man, from the cradle to the grave, lies 
in its uncertainty. 'T is an affair of luck. 

No amount of preparation in the matter of 
rods and lines and hooks and lures and nets and 
creels can change its essential character. No 
excellence of skill in casting the delusive fly or 
adjusting the tempting bait upon the hook can 
make the result secure. You may reduce the 
chances, but you cannot eliminate them. There 
are a thousand points at which fortune may 
intervene. The state of the weather, the height 
of the water, the appetite of the fish, the pre- 
sence or absence of other anglers — all these 

5 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

indeterminable elements enter into the reckon- 
ing of your success. There is no combination of 
stars in the firmament by which you can forecast 
the piscatorial .future. When you go a-fishing, 
you just take your chances ; you offer yourself 
as a candidate for anything that may be going ; 
you try your luck. 

There are certain days that are favourites 
among anglers, who regard them as propitious 
for the sport. I know a man who believes that 
the fish always rise better on Sunday than on 
any other day in the week. He complains 
bitterly of this supposed fact, because his reli- 
gious scruples will not allow him to take advan- 
tage of it. He confesses that he has sometimes 
thought seriously of joining the Seventh-Day 
Baptists. 

Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, in the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, I have found a curious tra- 
dition that Ascension Day is the luckiest in the 
year for fishing. On that morning the district 
school is apt to be thinly attended, and you 
must be on the stream very early if you do not 
wish to find wet footprints on the stones ahead 
of you. 

But in fact, all these superstitions about fortu- 
nate days are idle and presumptuous. If there 
were such days in the calendar, a kind and firm 
Providence would never permit the race of man 

6 



FISHEBMAN'S LUCK 

to discover them. It would rob life of one of 
its principal attractions, and make fishing alto- 
gether too easy to be interesting. 

Fisherman's luck is so notorious that it has 
passed into a proverb. But the fault with that 
familiar saying is that it is too short and too 
narrow to cover half the variations of the an- 
gler's possible experience. For if his luck should 
be bad, there is no portion of his anatomy, from 
the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, 
that may not be thoroughly wet. But if it 
should be good, he may receive an unearned 
blessing of abundance not only in his basket, 
but also in his head and his heart, his memory 
and his fancy. He may come home from some 
obscure, ill-named, lovely stream — some Dry 
Brook, or Southwest Branch of Smith's Eun — 
with a creel full of trout, and a mind full of 
grateful recollections of flowers that seemed to 
bloom for his sake, and birds that sang a new, 
sweet, friendly message to his tired soul. He 
may climb down to " Tommy's Rock " below 
the cliffs at Newport (as I have done many a 
day with my lady Greygown), and, all unno- 
ticed by the idle, weary promenaders in the 
path of fashion, haul in a basketful of black- 
fish, and at the same time look out across the 
shining sapphire waters and inherit a wondrous 
good fortune of dreams — 

7 



FISHEBMAN'S LUCK 

" Have glimpses that will make him less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

But all this, you must remember, depends 
upon something secret and incalculable, some- 
thing that we can neither command nor predict. 
It is an affair of gift, not of wages. Fish (and 
the other good things which are like sauce to 
the catching of them) cast no shadow before. 
Water is the emblem of instability. No one 
can tell what he shall draw out of it until he 
has taken in his line. Herein are found the 
true charm and profit of angling for all persons 
of a pure and childlike mind. 

Look at those two venerable gentlemen float- 
ing in a skiff upon the clear waters of Lake 
George. One of them is a successful states- 
man, an ex-President of the United States, a 
lawyer versed in all the curious eccentricities 
of the " lawless science of the law." The other 
is a learned doctor of medicine, able to give a 
name to all diseases from which men have im- 
agined that they suffered, and to invent new 
ones for those who are tired of vulgar maladies. 
But all their learning is forgotten, their cares 
and controversies are laid aside, in " innocuous 
desuetude." The Summer School of Sociology 
is assembled. The Medical Congress is in ses- 
sion. But they care not — no, not so much as 

8 



sk '.%i*,. 








HI 






"The little suburban boys with their strings and pin-hooks." 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

the value of a single live bait. The sun shines 
upon them with a fervent heat, but it irks them 
not. The rain descends, and the winds blow 
and beat upon them, but they are unmoved. 
They are securely anchored here in the lee of 
Sabbath-Day Point. 

What enchantment binds them to that incon- 
siderable spot? What magic fixes their eyes 
upon the point of a fishing-rod, as if it were the 
finger of destiny? It is the enchantment of 
uncertainty : the same natural magic that draws 
the little suburban boys in the spring of the 
year, with their strings and pin-hooks, around 
the shallow ponds where dace and redfins hide ; 
the same irresistible charm that fixes a row of 
city gamins, like ragged and disreputable fish- 
crows, on the end of a pier where blear-eyed 
flounders sometimes lurk in the muddy water. 
Let the philosopher explain it as he will. Let 
the moralist reprehend it as he chooses. There 
is nothing that attracts human nature more 
powerfully than the sport of tempting the un- 
known with a fishing-line. 

Those ancient anglers have set out upon an 
exodus from the tedious realm of the definite, 
the fixed, the must-certainly-come-to-pass. They 
are on a holiday in the free country of per- 
adventure. They do not know at this moment 
whether the next turn of Fortune's reel will 

9 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

bring up a perch or a pickerel, a sunfish or 
a black bass. It may be a hideous catfish or 
a squirming eel, or it may be a lake-trout, the 
grand prize in the Lake George lottery. There 
they sit, those gray-haired lads, full of hope, yet 
equally prepared for resignation ; taking no 
thought for the morrow, and ready to make the 
best of to-day ; harmless and happy players at 
the best of all games of chance. 

" In other words," I hear some severe and 
sour-complexioned reader say, "in plain lan- 
guage, they are a pair of old gamblers." 

Yes, if it pleases you to call honest men by 
a bad name. But they risk nothing that is not 
their own; and if they lose, they are not im- 
poverished. They desire nothing that belongs 
to other men ; and if they win, no one is robbed. 
If all gambling were like that, it would be diffi- 
cult to see the harm in it. Indeed, a daring 
moralist might even assert, and prove by argu- 
ment, that so innocent a delight in the taking of 
chances is an aid to virtue. 

Do you remember Martin Luther's reasoning 
on the subject of " excellent large pike "? He 
maintains that God would never have created 
them so good to the taste, if He had not meant 
them to be eaten. And for the same reason I 
conclude that this world would never have been 
left so full of uncertainties, nor human nature 

10 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

framed so as to find a peculiar joy and exhilara- 
tion in meeting them bravely and cheerfully, if 
it had not been divinely intended that most of 
our amusement and much of our education 
should come from this source. 

"Chance" is a disreputable word, I know. 
It is supposed by many pious persons to be im- 
proper and almost blasphemous to use it. But 
I am not one of those who share this verbal pre- 
judice. I am inclined rather to believe that it 
is a good word to which a bad reputation has 
been given. I feel grateful to that admirable 
" psychologist who writes like a novelist," Mr. 
William James, for his brilliant defence of it. 
For what does it mean, after all, but that some 
things happen in a certain way which might 
have happened in another way ? Where is the 
immorality, the irreverence, the atheism in such 
a supposition ? Certainly God must be compe- 
tent to govern a world in which there are pos- 
sibilities of various kinds, just as well as one 
in which every event is inevitably determined 
beforehand. St. Peter and the other fishermen- 
disciples on the Lake of Galilee were perfectly 
free to cast their net on either side of the ship. 
So far as they could see, so far as any one could 
see, it was a matter of chance where they chose 
to cast it. But it was not until they let it down, 
at the Master's word, on the right side that they 

11 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

had good luck. And not the least element of 
their joy in the draft of fishes was that it brought 
a change of fortune. 

Leave the metaphysics of the question on the 
table for the present. As a matter of fact, it is 
plain that our human nature is adapted to con- 
ditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from 
our view. We are not fitted to live in a world 
where a + b always equals c, and there is nothing 
more to follow. The interest of life's equation 
arrives with the appearance of cc, the unknown 
quantity. A settled, unchangeable, clearly fore- 
seeable order of things does not suit our consti- 
tution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. 
Creatures of habit we are undoubtedly ; but it 
is one of our most fixed habits to be fond of 
variety. The man who is never surprised does 
not know the taste of happiness, and unless the 
unexpected sometimes happens to us, we are most 
grievously disappointed. 

Much of the tediousness of highly civilized 
life comes from its smoothness and regularity. 
To-day is like yesterday, and we think that we 
can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot 
really do so. The chances are still there. But 
we have covered them up so deeply with the 
artificialities of life that we lose sight of them. 
It seems as if everything in our neat little world 
were arranged, and provided for, and reasonably 

12 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

sure to come to pass. The best way of escape 
from this Tcedium vitce is through a recreation 
like angling, not only because it is so evidently 
a matter of luck, but also because it tempts us 
into a wilder, freer life. It leads almost inevi- 
tably to camping out, which is a wholesome and 
sanitary imprudence. 

It is curious and pleasant, to my apprehension, 
to observe how many people in New England, 
one of whose States is called " the land of Steady 
Habits," are sensible of the joy of changing 
them, — out of doors. These good folk turn out 
from their comfortable farm-houses and their 
snug suburban cottages to go a-gypsying for a 
fortnight among the mountains or beside the sea. 
You see their white tents gleaming from the 
pine-groves around the little lakes, and catch 
glimpses of their bathing-clothes drying in the 
sun on the wiry grass that fringes the sand- 
dunes. Happy fugitives from the bondage of 
routine ! They have found out that a long jour- 
ney is not necessary to a good vacation. You 
may reach the Forest of Arden in a buck-board. 
The Fortunate Isles are within sailing distance 
in a dory. And a voyage on the river Pactolus 
is open to any one who can paddle a canoe. 

I was talking — or rather listening — with a 
barber, the other day, in the sleepy old town of 
Rivermouth. He told me, in one of those easy 

13 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

confidences which seem to make the razor run 
more smoothly, that it had been the custom of 
his family, for some twenty years past, to for- 
sake their commodious dwelling on Anchor Street 
every summer, and emigrate six miles, in a wagon, 
to Wallis Sands, where they spent the month of 
August very merrily under canvas. Here was 
a sensible household for you ! They did not feel 
bound to waste a year's income on a four weeks' 
holiday. They were not of those foolish folk 
who run across the sea, carefully carrying with 
them the same tiresome mind that worried them 
at home. They got a change of air by making 
an alteration of life. They escaped from the 
land of Egypt by stepping out into the wilder- 
ness and going a-fishing. 

The people who always live in houses, and 
sleep on beds, and walk on pavements, and buy 
their food from butchers and bakers and grocers, 
are not the most blessed inhabitants of this wide 
and various earth. The circumstances of their 
existence are too mathematical and secure for 
perfect contentment. They live at second or 
third hand. They are boarders in the world. 
Everything is done for them by somebody else. 

It is almost impossible for anything very inter- 
esting to happen to them. They must get their 
excitement out of the newspapers, reading of the 
hairbreadth escapes and moving accidents that 

14 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

befall people in real life. What do these tame 
ducks really know of the adventure of living ? 
If the weather is bad, they are snugly housed. 
If it is cold, there is a furnace in the cellar. If 
they are hungry, the shops are near at hand. It 
is all as dull, flat, stale, and unprofitable as add- 
ing up a column of figures. They might as well 
be brought up in an incubator. 

But when man abides in tents, after the man- 
ner of the early patriarchs, the face of the world 
is renewed. The vagaries of the clouds become 
significant. You watch the sky with a lover's 
look, eager to know whether it will smile, or 
frown. When you lie at night upon your bed of 
boughs and hear the rain pattering on the canvas 
close above your head, you wonder whether it is 
a long storm or only a shower. 

The rising wind shakes the tent-flaps. Are 
the pegs well driven down and the cords firmly 
fastened ? You fall asleep again and wake later, 
to hear the rain drumming still more loudly on 
the tight cloth, and the big breeze snoring 
through the forest, and the waves plunging along 
the beach. A stormy day ? Well, you must cut 
plenty of wood and keep the camp-fire glowing, 
for it will be hard to start it up again, if you let 
it get too low. There is little use in fishing or 
hunting in such a storm. But there is plenty to 
do in the camp : guns to be cleaned, tackle to be 

15 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

put in order, clothes to be mended, a good story 
of adventure to be read, a belated letter to be 
written to some poor wretch in a comfortable 
house, a game of hearts or cribbage to be played, 
or a campaign to be planned for the return of 
fair weather. The tent is perfectly dry. A lit- 
tle trench dug around it carries off the surplus 
water, and luckily it is pitched with the side to 
the lake, so that you get the pleasant heat of the 
fire without the unendurable smoke. Cooking 
in the rain has its disadvantages. But how good 
the supper tastes when it is served up on a tin 
plate, with an empty box for a table and a roll 
of blankets at the foot of the bed for a seat ! 

A day, two days, three days, the storm may 
continue, according to your luck. I have been 
out in the woods for a fortnight without a drop 
of rain or a sign of dust. Again, I have tented 
on the shore of a big lake for a week, waiting 
for an obstinate tempest to pass by. 

Look now, just at nightfall: is there not a 
little lifting and breaking of the clouds in the 
west, a little shifting of the wind toward a bet- 
ter quarter ? You go to bed with cheerful hopes. 
A dozen times in the darkness you are half 
awake, and listening drowsily to the sounds of 
the storm. Are they waxing or waning? Is 
that louder pattering a new burst of rain, or is 
it only the plumping of the big drops as they are 

16 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

shaken from the trees ? See, the dawn has come, 
and the gray light glimmers through the canvas. 
In a little while you will know your fate. 

Look ! There is a patch of bright yellow ra- 
diance on the peak of the tent. The shadow of 
a leaf dances over it. The sun must be shining. 
Good luck ! and up with you, for it is a glori- 
ous morning. 

The woods are glistening as fresh and fair as 
if they had been new-created overnight. The 
water sparkles with merriment, and tiny waves 
are dancing and singing all along the shore. 
Scarlet berries of the mountain-ash hang around 
the lake, like a necklace of coral. A pair of 
kingfishers dart back and forth across the bay, 
in flashes of living blue. A black eagle swings 
silently around his circle, far up in the cloudless 
sky. The air is full of pleasant sounds, but 
there is no noise. The world is full of joyful 
life, but there is no crowd and no confusion. 
There is no factory chimney to darken the day 
with its smoke, no trolley-car to split the silence 
with its shriek and smite the indignant ear with 
the clanging of its impudent bell. No lumber- 
man's axe has robbed the encircling forests of 
their glory of great trees. No fires have swept 
over the hills and left behind them the desola- 
tion of a bristly landscape. All is fresh and 
sweet, calm and clear and bright. 

17 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

'T was rather a rude jest of Nature, that tem- 
pest of yesterday. But if you have taken it in 
good part, you are all the more ready for her ca- 
ressing mood to-day. And now you must be off 
to get your dinner — not to order it at a shop, 
but to look for it in the woods and waters. You 
are ready to do your best with rod or gun. You 
will use all the skill you have as hunter or fisher- 
man. But what you shall find, and whether you 
shall subsist on bacon and biscuit, or feast on 
trout and partridges, is, after all, a matter of 
luck. 

I profess that it appears to me not only plea- 
sant, but also salutary, to be in this condition. 
It brings us home to the plain realities of life ; 
it teaches us that a man ought to work before 
he eats ; it reminds us that, after he has done 
all he can, he must still rely upon a mysterious 
bounty for his daily bread. It says to us, in 
homely and familiar words, that life was meant 
to be uncertain, that no man can tell what a day 
will bring forth, and that it is the part of wis- 
dom to be prepared for disappointments and 
grateful for all kinds of small mercies. 

There is a story in that fragrant book, 
The Little Flowers of St. Francis, which I 
wish to transcribe here, without tying a moral 
to it, lest any one should accuse me of preach- 
ing. 

18 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

" Hence [says the quaint old chronicler], having as- 
signed to his companions the other parts of the world, 
St. Francis, taking Brother Maximus as his comrade, 
set forth toward the province of France. And com- 
ing one day to a certain town, and being very hungry, 
they begged their bread as they went, according to 
the rule of their order, for the love of God. And St. 
Francis went through one quarter of the town, and 
Brother Maximus through another. But forasmuch 
as St. Francis was a man mean and low of stature, 
and hence was reputed a vile beggar by such as knew 
him not, he only received a few scanty crusts and 
mouthfuls of dry bread. But to Brother Maximus, 
who was large and well favoured, were given good 
pieces and big, and an abundance of bread, yea, whole 
loaves. Having thus begged, they met together with- 
out the town to eat, at a place where there was a 
clear spring and a fair large stone, upon which each 
spread forth the gifts that he had received. And St. 
Francis, seeing that the pieces of bread begged by 
Brother Maximus were bigger and better than his 
own, rejoiced greatly, saying, ' Oh, Brother Maxi- 
mus, we are not worthy of so great a treasure.' As 
he repeated these words many times, Brother Maxi- 
mus made answer : i Father, how can you talk of 
treasures when there is such great poverty and such 
lack of all things needful? Here is neither napkin 
nor knife, neither board nor trencher, neither house 
nor table, neither man-servant nor maid-servant.' 
St. Francis replied : ' And this is what I reckon a 
great treasure, where naught is made ready by human 

19 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

industry, but all that is here is prepared by Divine 
Providence, as is plainly set forth in the bread which 
we have begged, in the table of fair stone, and in the 
spring of clear water. And therefore I would that 
we should pray to God that He teach us with all our 
hearts to love the treasure of holy poverty, which 
is so noble a thing, and whose servant is God the 
Lord/ " 

I know of but one fairer description of a re- 
past in the open air ; and that is where we are 
told how certain poor fishermen, coming in very 
weary after a night of toil (and one of them very 
wet after swimming ashore), found their Mas- 
ter standing on the bank of the lake waiting for 
them. But it seems that he must have been 
busy in their behalf while he was waiting ; for 
there was a bright fire of coals burning on the 
shore, and a goodly fish broiling thereon, and 
bread to eat with it. And when the Master had 
asked them about their fishing, he said, " Come, 
now, and get your breakfast." So they sat down 
around the fire, and with his own hands he 
served them with the bread and the fish. 

Of all the banquets that have ever been given 
upon earth, that is the one in which I would 
rather have had a share. 

But it is now time that we should return to 
our fishing. And let us observe with gratitude 
that almost all of the pleasures that are connected 

' 20 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

with this pursuit — its accompaniments and 
variations, which run along with the tune and 
weave an embroidery of delight around it — 
have an accidental and gratuitous quality about 
them. They are not to be counted upon before- 
hand. They are like something that is thrown 
into a purchase by a generous and open-handed 
dealer, to make us pleased with our bargain and 
inclined to come back to the same shop. 

If I knew, for example, before setting out for 
a day on the brook, precisely what birds I should 
see, and what pretty little scenes in the drama 
of woodland life were to be enacted before my 
eyes, the expedition would lose more than half 
its charm. But, in fact, it is almost entirely a 
matter of luck, and that is why it never grows 
tiresome. 

The ornithologist knows pretty well where to 
look for the birds, and he goes directly to the 
places where he can find them, and proceeds to 
study them intelligently and systematically. But 
the angler who idles down the stream takes them 
as they come, and all his observations have a 
flavour of surprise in them. 

He hears a familiar song, — one that he has 
often heard at a distance, but never identified, — 
a loud, cheery, rustic cadence sounding from a 
low pine-tree close beside him. He looks up 
carefully through the needles and discovers a 

21 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

hooded warbler, a tiny, restless creature, dressed 
in green and yellow, with two white feathers in 
its tail, like the ends of a sash, and a glossy little 
black bonnet drawn closely about its golden head. 
He will never forget that song again. It will 
make the woods seem homelike to him, many a 
time, as he hears it ringing through the after- 
noon, like the call of a small country girl play- 
ing at hide-and-seek : " See me; here I 6e." 

Another day he sits down on a mossy log 
beside a cold, trickling spring to eat his lunch. 
It has been a barren day for birds. Perhaps he 
has fallen into the fault of pursuing his sport too 
intensely, and tramped along the stream without 
eyes for anything but fish. Perhaps this part of 
the grove has really been deserted by its feath- 
ered inhabitants, scared away by a prowling 
hawk or driven out by nest-hunters. But now, 
without notice, the luck changes. A surprise- 
party of redstarts breaks into full play around 
him. All through the dark-green shadow of the 
hemlocks they flash like little candles — can- 
delitas, the Cubans call them. Their brilliant 
markings of orange and black, and their flutter- 
ing, airy, graceful movements, make them most 
welcome visitors. There is no bird in the bush 
easier to recognize or pleasanter to watch. They 
run along the branches and dart and tumble 
through the air in fearless chase of invisible flies 

22 



FISHERMAN'S LUCE 

and moths. All the time they keep unfolding 
and furling their rounded tails, spreading them 
out and waving them and closing them suddenly, 
just as the Cuban girls manage their fans. In 
fact, the redstarts are the tiny fantail pigeons 
of the forest. 

There are other things about the birds, besides 
their musical talents and their good looks, that 
the fisherman has a chance to observe on his 
lucky days. He may see something of their 
courage and their devotion to their young. 

I suppose a bird is the bravest creature that 
lives, in spite of its natural timidity. From 
which we may learn that true courage is not in- 
compatible with nervousness, and that heroism 
does not mean the absence of fear, but the con- 
quest of it. Who does not remember the first 
time that he ever ran across a hen-partridge 
with her brood, as he was strolling through the 
woods in June ? How splendidly the old bird 
forgets herself in her efforts to defend and hide 
her young ! 

Smaller birds are no less daring. One even- 
ing last summer I was walking up the Eisti- 
gouche from Camp Harmony to Mowett's Eock, 
where my canoe was waiting for me, to fish for 
salmon. As I stepped out from a thicket on to 
the shingly bank of the river, a spotted sandpi- 
per teetered along before me, followed by three 

23 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

young ones. Frightened at first, the mother 
flew out a few feet over the water. But the 
piperlings could not fly, having no feathers; 
and they crept under a crooked log. I rolled the 
log over very gently and took one of the cower- 
ing creatures into my hand — a tiny, palpitating 
scrap of life, covered with soft gray down, and 
peeping shrilly, like a Liliputian chicken. And 
now the mother was transformed. Her fear was 
changed into fury. She was a bully, a fighter, 
an Amazon in feathers. She flew at me with 
loud cries, dashing herself almost into my face. 
I was a tyrant, a robber, a kidnapper, and she 
called heaven to witness that she would never 
give up her offspring without a struggle. Then 
she changed her tactics and appealed to my baser 
passions. She fell to the ground and fluttered 
around me as if her wing were broken. " Look ! " 
she seemed to say, " I am bigger than that poor 
little baby. If you must eat something, eat me ! 
My wing is lame. I can't fly. You can easily 
catch me. Let that little bird go ! " And so I 
did ; and the whole family disappeared in the 
bushes as if by magic. I wondered whether the 
mother was saying to herself, after the manner 
of her sex, that men are stupid things, after all, 
and no match for the cleverness of a female who 
stoops to deception in a righteous cause. 

Now, that trivial experience was what I call a 

24 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

piece of good luck — for me, and, in the event, 
for the sandpiper. But it is doubtful whether 
it would be quite so fresh and pleasant in the 
remembrance, if it had not also fallen to my lot 
to take two uncommonly good salmon on that 
same evening, in a dry season. 

Never believe a fisherman when he tells you 
that he does not care about the fish he catches. 
He may say that he angles only for the pleasure 
of being out-of-doors, and that he is just as well 
contented when he takes nothing as when he 
makes a good catch. He may think so, but it 
is not true. He is not telling a deliberate false- 
hood. He is only assuming an unconscious pose, 
and indulging in a delicate bit of self-flattery. 
Even if it were true, it would not be at all to his 
credit. 

Watch him on that lucky day when he comes 
home with a full basket of trout on his shoulder, 
or a quartette of silver salmon covered with green 
branches in the bottom of the canoe. His face 
is broader than it was when he went out, and 
there is a sparkle of triumph in his eye. " It is 
naught, it is naught," he says, in modest depre- 
ciation of his triumph. But you shall see that 
he lingers fondly about the place where the fish 
are displayed upon the grass, and does not fail 
to look carefully at the scales when they are 
weighed, and has an attentive ear for the com- 

25 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

ments of admiring spectators. You shall find, 
moreover, that he is not unwilling to narrate the 
story of the capture — how the big fish rose 
short, four times, to four different flies, and 
finally took a small Black Dose, and played all 
over the pool, and ran down a terribly stiff rapid 
to the next pool below, and sulked for twenty 
minutes, and had to be stirred up with stones, 
and made such a long fight that, when he came 
in at last, the hold of the hook was almost worn 
through, and it fell out of his mouth as he 
touched the shore. Listen to this tale as it is 
told, with endless variations, by every man who 
has brought home a fine fish, and you will per- 
ceive that the fisherman does care for his luck, 
after all. 

And why not ? I am no friend to the people 
who receive the bounties of Providence without 
visible gratitude. When the sixpence falls into 
your hat, you may laugh. When the messenger 
of an unexpected blessing takes you by the hand 
and lifts you up and bids you walk, you may 
leap and run and sing for joy, even as the lame 
man, whom St. Peter healed, skipped piously 
and rejoiced aloud as he passed through the 
Beautiful Gate of the Temple. There is no vir- 
tue in solemn indifference. Joy is just as much 
a duty as beneficence is. Thankfulness is the 
other side of mercy. 

26 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

When you have good luck in anything, you 
ought to be glad. Indeed, if you are not glad, 
you are not really lucky. 

But boasting and self-glorification I would 
have excluded, and most of all from the behav- 
iour of the angler. He, more than other men, is 
dependent for his success upon the favour of an 
unseen benefactor. Let his skill and industry 
be never so great, he can do nothing unless la 
bonne chance comes to him. 

I was once fishing on a fair little river, the 
P'tit Saguenay, with two excellent anglers and 

pleasant companions, H. E. G and C. S. 

D . They had done all that was humanly 

possible to secure good sport. The stream had 
been well preserved. They had boxes full of 
beautiful flies, and casting-lines imported from 
England, and a rod for every fish in the river. 
But the weather was " dour," and the water 
" drumly," and every day the lumbermen sent a 
" drive " of ten thousand spruce logs rushing 
down the flooded stream. For three days we 
had not seen a salmon, and on the fourth, de- 
spairing, we went down to angle for sea-trout in 
the tide of the greater Saguenay. There, in the 
£alt water, where men say the salmon never take 
the fly, H. E. G , fishing with a small trout- 
rod, a poor, short line, and an ancient red ibis 
of the common kind, rose and hooked a lordly 

27 



FISHEBMAN'S LUCK 

salmon of at least five-and-thirty pounds, Was 
not this pure luck ? 

Pride is surely the most unbecoming of all 
vices in a fisherman. For though intelligence 
and practice and patience and genius, and many 
other noble things which modesty forbids him 
to mention, enter into his pastime, so that it is, 
as Izaak Walton has firmly maintained, an art ; 
yet, because fortune still plays a controlling hand 
in the game, its net results should never be 
spoken of with a haughty and vain spirit. Let 
not the angler imitate Timoleon, who boasted of 
his luck and lost it. It is tempting Providence 
to print the record of your wonderful catches in 
the sporting newspapers ; or at least, if it must 
be done, there should stand at the head of the 
column some humble, thankful motto, like "JVon 
nobis, Domine." Even Father Izaak, when 
he has a fish on his line, says, with a due sense 
of human limitations, " There is a trout now, 
and a good one too, if I can but hold him! " 

This reminds me that we left H. E. G , a 

few sentences back, playing his unexpected 
salmon, on a trout-rod, in the Saguenay. Four 
times that great fish leaped into the air ; twice 
he suffered the pliant reed to guide him toward 
the shore, and twice ran out again to deeper 
water. Then his spirit awoke within him : he 
bent the rod like a willow wand, dashed toward 

28 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

the middle of the river, broke the line as if it had 
been pack-thread, and sailed triumphantly away 
to join the white porpoises that were tumbling 
in the tide. " Whe-e-ew" they said, " whe-e-ew I 
psha-a-aio I " blowing out their breath in long, 
soft sighs as they rolled about like huge snow- 
balls in the black water. But what did H. E. 

G say ? He sat him quietly down upon a 

rock and reeled in the remnant of his line, utter- 
ing these remarkable and Christian words : 
" Those porpoises," said he, " describe the situa- 
tion rather mildly. But it was good fun while 
it lasted." 

Again I remembered a saying of Walton : 
" Well, Scholar, you must endure worse luck 
sometimes, or you will never make a good an- 
gler." 

Or a good man, either, I am sure. For he 
who knows only how to enjoy, and not to endure, 
is ill-fitted to go down the stream of life through 
such a world as this. 

I would not have you to suppose, gentle reader, 
that in discoursing of fisherman's luck I have in 
mind only those things which may be taken with 
a hook. It is a parable of human experience. 
I have been thinking, for instance, of Walton's 
life as well as of his angling : of the losses and 
sufferings that he, the firm Royalist, endured 
when the Commonwealth men came marching 

29 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

into London town ; of the consoling days that 
were granted to him, in troublous times, on the 
banks of the Lea and the Dove and the New 
River, and the good friends that he made there, 
with whom he took sweet counsel in adversity ; 
of the little children who played in his house for 
a few years, and then were called away into the 
silent land where he could hear their voices no 
longer. I was thinking how quietly and peace- 
ably he lived through it all, not complaining nor 
desponding, but trying to do his work well, 
whether he was keeping a shop or writing books, 
and seeking to prove himself an honest man and 
a cheerful companion, and never scorning to 
take with a thankful heart such small comforts 
and recreations as came to him. 

It is a plain, homely, old-fashioned meditation, 
reader, but not unprofitable. When I talk to 
you of fisherman's luck, I do not forget that 
there are deeper things behind it. I remember 
that what we call our fortunes, good or ill, are 
but the wise dealings and distributions of a 
Wisdom higher, and a Kindness greater, than 
our own. And I suppose that their meaning is 
that we should learn, by all the uncertainties of 
our life, even the smallest, how to be brave and 
steady and temperate and hopeful, whatever 
comes, because we believe that behind it all there 
• 30 



FISHERMAN'S LUCK 

lies a purpose of good, and over it all there 
watches a providence of blessing. 

In the school of life many branches of know- 
ledge are taught. But the only philosophy that 
amounts to anything, after all, is just the secret 
of making friends with our luck. 

31 



II 

THE THRILLING MOMENT 



In angling, as in all other recreatiofis into which excitement enters, 
we have to be on our guard, so that we can at any mome7it throw a 
weight of self-control into the scale against misfortune ; and happily 
we can study to some purpose, both to increase our pleasure in success 
and to lessen our distress caused by what goes ill. It is not only in 
cases of great disasters, however, that the angler needs self-control. 
He is perpetually called tipon to use it to withsta7id small exaspera- 
tions. n — Sir Edward Grey : Fly-Fishing. 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

Every moment of life, I suppose, is more 
or less of a turning-point. Opportunities are 
swarming around us all the time thicker than 
gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud 
of chances, and if we were always conscious of 
them they would worry us almost to death. 

But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed 
and cushioned by habit, so that we can live com- 
fortably with it. Only now and then, by w r ay 
of special excitement, it starts up wide awake. 
We perceive how delicately our fortune is poised 
and balanced on the pivot of a single incident. 
We get a peep at the oscillating needle, and, 
because we have happened to see it tremble, 
we call our experience a crisis. 

The meditative angler is not exempt from 
these sensational periods. There are times when 
all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems 
to condense itself into one big chance, and stand 
out before him like a salmon on the top wave 
of a rapid. He sees that his luck hangs by a 
single strand of gut, and he cannot tell whether 
it will hold or break. This is his thrilling 
moment, and he never forgets it. 

35 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

Mine came to me in the autumn of 1894, on 
the banks of the Unpronounceable River, in the 
Province of Quebec. It was the last day, of 
the open season for ouananiche, and we had set 
our hearts on catching some good fish to take 
home with us. We walked up from the mouth 
of the river, four preposterously long and rough 
miles, to the famous fishing-pool, "la place de 
peche a Boimn" It was a noble day for walk- 
ing ; the air was clear and crisp, and all the hills 
around us were glowing with the crimson foliage 
of those little bushes which God created to make 
burned lands look beautiful. The trail ended in 
a precipitous gully, down which we scrambled 
with high hopes, and fishing-rods unbroken, only 
to find that the river was in a condition which 
made angling absurd if not impossible. 

There must have been a cloud-burst among 
the mountains, for the water was coming down 
in flood. The stream was bank-full, gurgling 
and eddying out among the bushes, and rushing 
over the shoal where the fish used to lie, in a 
brown torrent ten feet deep. Our last day with 
the land-locked salmon seemed destined to be a 
failure, and we must wait eight months before 
we could have another. There were three of 
us in the disappointment, and we shared it ac- 
cording to our temperaments. 

Paul virtuously resolved not to give up while 

36 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

there was a chance left, and wandered down- 
stream to look for an eddy where he might pick 
up a small fish. Ferdinand, our guide, resigned 
himself without a sigh to the consolation of eat- 
ing blueberries, which he always did with great 
cheerfulness. But I, being more cast down than 
either of my comrades, sought out a convenient 
seat among the rocks, and, adapting my anat- 
omy as well as possible to the irregularities of 
nature's upholstery, pulled from my pocket An 
Amateur Angler's Days in Dove Dale, and 
settled down to read myself into a Christian 
frame of mind. 

Before beginning, my eyes roved sadly over 
the pool once more. It was but a casual glance. 
It lasted only for an instant. But in that for- 
tunate fragment of time I distinctly saw the 
broad tail of a big ouananiche rise and disap- 
pear in the swift water at the very head of the 
pool. 

Immediately the whole aspect of affairs was 
changed. Despondency vanished, and the river 
glittered with the beams of rising hope. 

Such is the absurd disposition of some anglers. 
They never see a fish without believing that 
they can catch him ; but if they see no fish, they 
are inclined to think that the river is empty and 
the world hollow. 

I said nothing to my companions. It would 

37 



THE THBILLING MOMENT 

have been unkind to disturb them with expecta- 
tions which might never be realized. My im- 
mediate duty was to get within casting distance 
of that salmon as soon as possible. 

The way along the shore of the pool was 
difficult. The bank was very steep, and the 
rocks by the river's edge were broken and glib- 
bery. Presently I came to a sheer wall of stone, 
perhaps thirty feet high, rising directly from the 
deep water. 

There was a tiny ledge or crevice running part 
of the way across the face of this wall, and by 
this four-inch path I edged along, holding my 
rod in one hand, and clinging affectionately with 
the other to such clumps of grass and little 
bushes as I could find. There was one small 
huckleberry plant to which I had a particular 
attachment. It was fortunately a firm little 
bush, and as I held fast to it I remembered 
Tennyson's poem which begins 

" Flower in the crannied wall,' ' 

and reflected that if I should succeed in plucking 
out this flower, " root and all," it would prob- 
ably result in an even greater increase of know- 
ledge than the poet contemplated. 

The ledge in the rock now came to an end. 
But below me in the pool there was a sunken 
reef ; and on this reef a long log had caught, 

38 



THE THBILLING MOMENT 

with one end sticking out of the water, within 
jumping distance. It was the only chance. To 
go back would have been dangerous. An an- 
gler with a large family dependent upon him 
for support has no right to incur unnecessary 
perils. 

Besides, the fish was waiting for me at the 
upper end of the pool ! 

So I jumped ; landed on the end of the log ; 
felt it settle slowly down ; ran along it like a 
small boy on a seesaw, and leaped off into 
shallow water just as the log rolled from the 
ledge and lunged out into the stream. 

It went wallowing through the pool and ca- 
vorting along the rapid like a playful hippo- 
potamus. I watched it with interest and con- 
gratulated myself that I was no longer embarked 
upon it. On that craft a voyage down the Un- 
pronounceable Eiver would have been short but 
far from merry. The " all ashore " bell was not 
rung early enough. I just got off, with not half 
a second to spare. 

But now all was well, for I was within reach 
of the fish. A little scrambling over the rocks 
brought me to a point where I could easily cast 
over him. He was lying in a swift, smooth, nar- 
row channel between two large stones. It was 
a snug resting-place, and no doubt he would 
remain there for some time. So I took out my 

39 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

fly-book and prepared to angle for him accord- 
ing to the approved rules of the art. 

Nothing is more foolish in sport than the 
habit of precipitation. And yet it is a fault 
to which I am singularly subject. As a boy, in 
Brooklyn, I never came in sight of the Capi- 
toline Skating Pond, after a long ride in the 
horse-cars, without breaking into a run along 
the board walk, buckling on my skates in a 
furious hurry, and flinging myself impetuously 
upon the ice, as if I feared that it would melt 
away before I could reach it. Now this, I con- 
fess, is a grievous defect, which advancing years 
have not entirely cured ; and I found it neces- 
sary to take myself firmly, as it were, by the 
mental coat-collar, and resolve not to spoil the 
chance of catching the only ouananiche in the 
Unpronounceable River by undue haste in fish- 
ing for him. 

I carefully tested a brand-new leader, and 
attached it to the line with great deliberation 
and the proper knot. Then I gave my whole 
mind to the important question of a wise selec- 
tion of flies. 

It is astonishing how much time and mental 
anxiety a man can spend on an apparently 
simple question like this. When you are buy- 
ing flies in a shop it seems as if you never had 
half enough. You keep on picking out a half- 

40 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

dozen of each new variety as fast as the enticing 
salesman shows them to you. You stroll through 
the streets of Montreal or Quebec and drop in 
at every fishing-tackle dealer's to see whether 
you can find a few more good flies. Then, 
when you come to look over your collection at 
the critical moment on the bank of a stream, it 
seems as if you had ten times too many. And, 
spite of all, the precise fly that you need is not 
there. 

You select a couple that you think fairly good, 
lay them down beside you in the grass, and go 
on looking through the book for something 
better. Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to 
pick up those that you have laid out, and find 
that they have mysteriously vanished from the 
face of the earth. 

Then you struggle with naughty words and 
relapse into a condition of mental palsy. 

Precipitation is a fault. But deliberation, for 
a person of precipitate disposition, is a vice. 

The best thing to do in such a case is to adopt 
some abstract theory of action without delay, 
and put it into practice without hesitation. Then 
if you fail, you can throw the responsibility on 
the theory. 

Now, in regard to flies there are two theories. 
The old, conservative theory is, that on a bright 
day you should use a dark, dull fly, because it 

41 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

is less conspicuous. So I followed that theory 
first and put on a Great Dun and a Dark 
Montreal. I cast them delicately over the fish, 
but he would not look at them. 

Then I perverted myself to the new, radical 
theory which says that on a bright day you 
must use a light, gay fly, because it is more in 
harmony with the sky, and therefore less notice- 
able. Accordingly I put on a Professor and 
a Parmacheene Belle ; but this combination of 
learning and beauty had no attraction for the 
ouananiche. 

Then I fell back on a theory of my own, to 
the effect that the ouananiche have an aversion 
to red, and prefer yellow and brown. So I tried 
various combinations of flies in which these col- 
ours predominated. 

Then I abandoned all theories and went 
straight through my book, trying something 
from every page, and winding up with that lure 
which the guides consider infallible, — "a Jock 
o' Scott that cost fifty cents at Quebec." But it 
was all in vain. I was ready to despair. 

At this psychological moment I heard behind 
me a voice of hope, — the song of a grasshopper : 
not one of those fat-legged, green-winged im- 
beciles that feebly tumble in the summer fields, 
but a game grasshopper, — one of those thin- 
shanked, brown-winged fellows that leap like 

42 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

kangaroos, and fly like birds, and sing Kri- 
karee-karee-kri in their flight. 

It is not really a song, I know, but it sounds 
like one ; and, if you had heard that Kri-karee 
carolling as I chased him over the rocks, you 
would have been sure that he was mocking me. 

I believed that he was the predestined lure 
for that ouananiche ; but it was hard to persuade 
him to fulfil his destiny. I slapped at him with 
my hat, but he was not there. I grasped at him 
on the bushes, and brought away " nothing but 
leaves." At last he made his way to the very 
edge of the water and poised himself on a stone, 
with his legs well tucked in for a long leap and 
a bold'flight to the other side of the river. It 
was my final opportunity. I made a desperate 
grab at it and caught the grasshopper. 

My premonition proved to be correct. When 
that Kri-karee, invisibly attached to my leader, 
went floating down the stream, the ouananiche 
was surprised. It was the fourteenth of Sep- 
tember, and he had supposed the grasshopper 
season was over. The unexpected temptation 
was too strong for him. He rose with a rush, 
and in an instant I was fast to the best land- 
locked salmon of the year. 

But the situation was not without its embar- 
rassments. My rod weighed only four and a 
quarter ounces ; the fish weighed between six 

43 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

and seven pounds. The water was furious and 
headstrong. I had only thirty yards of line 
and no landing-net. 

" HoTa 1 Ferdinand!'* I cried. " Apporte 
la nette, vite ! A beauty ! Hurry up ! r ' 

I thought it must be an hour while he was 
making his way over the hill, through the under- 
brush, around the cliff. Again and again the 
fish ran out my line almost to the last turn. A 
dozen times he leaped from the water, shak- 
ing his silvery sides. Twice he tried to cut the 
leader across a sunken ledge. But at last he 
was played out, and came in quietly towards 
the point of the rock. At the same moment 
Ferdinand appeared with the net. 

Now, the use of the net is really the most dif- 
ficult part of angling. And Ferdinand is the 
best netsman in the Lake St. John country. He 
never makes the mistake of trying to scoop a 
fish in motion. He does not grope around with 
aimless, futile strokes as if he were feeling for 
something in the dark. He does not entangle 
the dropper-fly in the net and tear the tail-fly 
out of the fish's mouth. He does not get 
excited. 

He quietly sinks the net in the water, and 
waits until he can see the fish distinctly, lying 
perfectly still and within reach. Then he makes 
a swift movement, like that of a mower swing- 

44 




The situation was not without its embarrassments. 



THE THBILLING MOMENT 

ing the scythe, takes the fish into the net head- 
first, and lands him without a slip. 

I felt sure that Ferdinand was going to do 
the trick in precisely this way with my ouana- 
niche. Just at the right instant he made one 
quick, steady swing of the arms, and — the head 
of the net broke clean off the handle and went 
floating away with the fish in it ! 

All seemed to be lost. But Ferdinand was 
equal to the occasion. He seized a long, crooked 
stick that lay in a pile of driftwood on the shore, 
sprang into the water up to his waist, caught 
the net as it drifted past, and dragged it to 
land, with the ultimate ouananiche, the prize of 
the season, still glittering through its meshes. 

This is the story of my most thrilling moment 
as an angler. 

But which was the moment of the deepest 
thrill? 

Was it when the huckleberry bush saved me 
from a watery grave, or when the log rolled 
under my feet and started down the river? 
Was it when the fish rose, or when the net 
broke, or when the long stick captured it ? 

No, it was none of these. It was when the 
Kri-karee sat with his legs tucked under him on 
the brink of the stream. That was the turning- 
point. The fortunes of the day depended on the 
comparative quickness of the reflex action of his 

45 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

neural ganglia and mine. That was the thrill- 
ing moment. 

I see it now. A crisis is really the common- 
est thing in the world. The reason why life 
sometimes seems dull to us is because we do not 
perceive the importance and the excitement of 
getting bait. 



46 



Ill 

TALKABILITY 

A PRELUDE AND THEME 
WITH VARIATIONS 



" He praises a meditative life, and with evident sincerity : but we 
feel that he liked nothing so well as good talk." — James Russell 
Lowell: Walton. 



TALKABILITY 



The inventor of the familiar maxim that 
" fishermen must not talk " is lost in the mists of 
antiquity, and well deserves his fate. For a more 
footless rule, a conventionality more obscure 
and aimless in its tyranny, was never imposed 
upon an innocent and honourable occupation, 
to diminish its pleasure and discount its profits. 
Why, in the name of all that is genial, should 
anglers go about their harmless sport in stealthy 
silence like conspirators, or sit together in a 
boat, dumb, glum, and penitential, like naughty 
schoolboys on the bench of disgrace ? 'T is an 
Omorcan superstition ; a rule without a reason ; 
a venerable, idiotic fashion invented to repress 
lively spirits and put a premium on stupidity. 

For my part, I incline rather to the opinion 
of the Neapolitan fishermen who maintain that 
a certain amount of noise, of certain kinds, is 
likely to improve the fishing, and who have a 
particular song, very sweet and charming, which 
they sing to draw the fishes around them. It is 

49 



TALKABILITY 

narrated, likewise, of the good St. Brandan, that 
on his notable voyage from Ireland in search of 
Paradise, he chanted the service for St. Peter's 
day so pleasantly that a subaqueous audience of 
all sorts and sizes was attracted, insomuch that 
the other monks began to be afraid, and begged 
the abbot that he would sing a little lower, for 
they were not quite sure of the intention of the 
congregation. Of St. Anthony of Padua it is 
said that he even succeeded in persuading the 
fishes, in great multitudes, to listen to a sermon ; 
and that when it was ended (it must be noted 
that it was both short and cheerful) they bowed 
their heads and moved their bodies up and down 
with every mark of fondness and approval of 
what the holy father had spoken. 

If we can believe this, surely we need not be 
incredulous of things which seem to be no less, 
but rather more, in harmony with the course of 
nature. Creatures who are sensible to the at- 
tractions of a sermon can hardly be indifferent 
to the charm of other kinds of discourse. I can 
easily imagine a company of grayling wishing 
to overhear a conversation between I. W. and 
his affectionate (but somewhat prodigal) son 
and servant, Charles Cotton ; and surely, every 
intelligent salmon in Scotland might have been 
glad to hear Christopher North and the Ettrick 
Shepherd bandy jests and swap stories. As for 

50 



TALKABILITY 

trout, — was there one in Massachusetts that 
would not have been curious to listen to the in- 
timate opinions of Daniel Webster as he loafed 
along the banks of the Marshpee, — or is there 
one in Pennsylvania to-day that might not be 
drawn with interest and delight to the feet of 
Joseph Jefferson, telling how he conceived and 
wrote Rip Van Winkle on the banks of a trout- 
stream ? 

Fishermen must be silent ? On the contrary, 
it is far more likely that good talk may promote 
good fishing. 

All this, however, goes upon the assumption 
that fish can hear, in the proper sense of the 
word. And this, it must be confessed, is an 
assumption not yet fully verified. Experienced 
anglers and students of fishy ways are divided 
upon the question. It is beyond a doubt that 
all fishes, except the very lowest forms, have 
ears. But then so have all men ; and yet we 
have the best authority for believing that there 
are many who " having ears, hear not." 

The ears of fishes, for the most part, are in- 
closed in their skull, and have no outward open- 
ing. Water conveys sound, as every country 
boy knows who has tried the experiment of div- 
ing to the bottom of the swimming-hole and 
knocking two big stones together. But I doubt 
whether any country boy, engaged in this inter- 

51 



TALKABILITY 

esting scientific experiment, has heard the con- 
versation of his friends on the bank who were 
engaged in hiding his clothes. 

There are many curious and more or less ven- 
erable stories to the effect that fishes may be 
trained to assemble at the ringing of a bell or 
the beating of a drum. Lucian, a writer of the 
second century, tells of a certain lake wherein 
many sacred fishes were kept, of which the lar- 
gest had names given to them, and came when 
they were called. But Lucian was not a man of 
especially good reputation, and there is an air 
of improbability about his statement that the 
largest fishes came. This is not the custom of 
the largest fishes. 

In the present century there was a tale of an 
eel in a garden-well, in Scotland, which would 
come to be fed out of a spoon when the children 
called him by his singularly inappropriate name 
of Rob Roy. This seems a more likely story 
than Lucian's; at all events it comes from a 
more orthodox atmosphere. But before giving 
it full credence, I should like to know whether 
the children, when they called " Rob Roy ! " 
stood where the eel could see the spoon. 

On the other side of the question, we may 
quote Mr. Ronalds, also a Scotchman, and the 
learned author of The Fly-Fisher's Fntomo- 
logy, who conducted a series of experiments 

52 



TALKABILITY 

which proved that even trout, the most fuga- 
cious of fish, are not in the least disturbed by 
the discharge of a gun, provided the flash is 
concealed. Mr. Henry P. Wells, the author of 
The American Salmon Angler, says that he has 
" never been able to make a sound in the air 
which seemed to produce the slightest effect 
upon trout in the water." 

So the controversy on the hearing of fishes 
continues, and the conclusion remains open. 
Every man is at liberty to embrace that side 
which pleases him best. You may think that 
the finny tribes are as sensitive to sound as 
Fine Ear, in the German fairy-tale, who could 
hear the grass grow. Or you may hold the op- 
posite opinion, that they are 

" Deafer than the blue-eyed cat." 

But whichever theory you adopt, in practice, if 
you are a wise fisherman, you will steer a mid- 
dle course, between one thing which must be 
left undone and another thing which should be 
done. You will refrain from stamping on the 
bank, or knocking on the side of the boat, or 
dragging the anchor among the stones on the 
bottom ; for when the water vibrates the fish are 
likely to vanish. But you will indulge as freely 
as you please in pleasant discourse with your 
comrade ; for it is certain that fishing is never 

53 



TALKABILITY 

hindered, and may even be helped, in one way 
or another, by good talk. 

I should therefore have no hesitation in ad- 
vising any one to choose, for companionship on 
an angling expedition, long or short, a person 
who has the rare merit of being talkable. 

II 

THEME — ON A SMALL, USEFUL VIRTUE 

" Talkable " is not a new adjective. But it 
needs a new definition, and the complement of 
a corresponding noun. I would fain set down 
on paper some observations and reflections which 
may serve to make its meaning clear, and render 
due praise to that most excellent quality in man 
or woman, — especially in anglers, — the small 
but useful virtue of talhability. 

Robert Louis Stevenson uses the word " talk- 
able " in one of his essays to denote a certain 
distinction among the possible subjects of hu- 
man speech. There are some things, he says in 
effect, about which you can really talk ; and 
there are other things about which you cannot 
properly talk at all, but only dispute, or ha- 
rangue, or prose, or moralize, or chatter. 

After mature consideration I have arrived at 
the opinion that this distinction among the 
themes of speech is an illusion. It does not 

54 



TALKABILITY 

exist. All subjects, " the foolish things of the 
world, and the weak things of the world, and 
base things of the world, yea, and things that 
are not," may provide matter for good talk, if 
only the right people are engaged in the enter- 
prise. I know a man who can make a descrip- 
tion of the weather as entertaining as a tune on 
the violin ; and even on the threadbare theme 
of the waywardness of domestic servants, I have 
heard a discreet woman play the most diverting 
and instructive variations. 

No, the quality of talkability does not mark 
a distinction among things ; it denotes a differ- 
ence among people. It is not an attribute un- 
equally distributed among material objects and 
abstract ideas. It is a virtue which belongs to 
the mind and moral character of certain persons. 
It is a reciprocal human quality ; active as well 
as passive ; a power of bestowing and receiving. 

An amiable person is one who has a capacity 
for loving and being loved. An affable person 
is one who is ready to speak and to be spoken 
to, — as, for example, Milton's " affable arch- 
angel " Raphael ; though it must be confessed 
that he laid the chief emphasis on the active side 
of his affability. A " clubable " person (to use 
a word which Dr. Samuel Johnson invented but 
did not put into his dictionary) is one who is fit 
for the familiar give and take of club-life. A 

55 



TALKABILITY 

talkable person, therefore, is one whose nature 
and disposition invite the easy interchange of 
thoughts and feelings, one in whose company it 
is a pleasure to talk or to be talked to. 

Now this good quality of talkability is to be 
distinguished, very strictly and inflexibly, from 
the bad quality which imitates it and often brings 
it into discredit. I mean the vice of talkative- 
ness. That is a selfish, one-sided, inharmonious 
affair, full of discomfort, and productive of 
most unchristian feelings. 

You may observe the operations of this vice 
not only in human beings, but also in birds. 
All the birds in the bush can make some kind 
of a noise ; and most of them like to do it ; and 
some of them like it a great deal and do it very 
much. But it is not always for edification, nor 
are the most vociferous and garrulous birds 
commonly the most pleasing. A parrot, for in- 
stance, in your neighbour's back yard, in the 
summer time, when the windows are open, is not 
an aid to the development of Christian charac- 
ter. I knew a man who had to stay in the city 
all summer, and in the autumn was asked to 
describe the character and social standing of a 
new family that had moved into his neignbour- 
hood. Were they " nice people," well-bred, in- 
telligent, respectable? "Well," said he, "I 
don't know what your standards are, and would 

56 



TALKABILITY 

prefer not to say anything libellous ; but I '11 
tell you in a word, — they are the kind of peo- 
ple that keep a parrot." 

Then there is the English sparrow! What 
an insufferable chatterbox, what an incurable 
scold, what a voluble and tiresome blackguard 
is this little feathered cockney. There is not a 
sweet or pleasant word in all his vocabulary. 

I am convinced that he talks altogether of 
scandals and fights and street-sweepings. 

The kingdom of ornithology is divided into 
two departments, — real birds and English spar- 
rows. English sparrows are not real birds ; 
they are little beasts. 

There was a church in Brooklyn which was 
once covered with a great and spreading vine, in 
which the sparrows built innumerable nests. 
These ungodly little birds kept up such a din 
that it was impossible to hear the service of the 
sanctuary. The faithful clergy strained their 
voices to the verge of ministerial sore throat, 
but the people had no peace in their devotions 
until the vine was cut down, and the Anglican 
intruders were evicted. 

A talkative person is like an English spar- 
row, — a bird that cannot sing, and will sing, 
and ought to be persuaded not to try to sing. 
But a talkable person has the gift that belongs 
to the wood thrush and the veery and the wren, 

57 



TALKABILITY 

the oriole and the white-throat and the rose- 
breasted grosbeak, the mockingbird and the 
robin (sometimes) ; and the brown thrush ; yes, 
the brown thrush has it to perfection, if you can 
catch him alone, — the gift of being interesting, 
charming, delightful, in the most off-hand and 
various modes of utterance. 

Talkability is not at all the same thing as 
eloquence. The eloquent man surprises, over- 
whelms, and sometimes paralyzes us by the 
display of his power. Great orators are seldom 
good talkers. Oratory in exercise is masterful 
and jealous, and intolerant of all interruptions. 
Oratory in preparation is silent, self-centred, un- 
communicative. The painful truth of this re- 
mark may be seen in the row of countenances 
along the president's table at a public banquet 
about nine o'clock in the evening. The bicycle- 
face seems unconstrained and merry by compar- 
ison with the after-dinner-speech-face. The flow 
of table-talk is corked by the anxious conception 
of post-prandial oratory. 

Thackeray, in one of his Roundabout Papers, 
speaks of " the sin of tall-talking," which, he 
says, " is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, 
critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or 
old people." But this is not in accord with my 
observation. I should say it was rather the sin 
of dilettanti who are ambitious of that high-step- 

58 



TALKABILITY 

ping accomplishment which is called " conversa- 
tional ability." 

This has usually, to my mind, something set 
and artificial about it, although in its most per- 
fect form the art almost succeeds in concealing 
itself. But, at all events, " conversation " is talk 
in evening dress, with perhaps a little powder 
and a touch of rouge. 'T is like one of those 
wise virgins who are said to look their best 
by lamplight. And doubtless this is an excel- 
lent thing, and not without its advantages. 
But for my part, commend me to one who loses 
nothing by the early morning illumination, — 
one who brings all her attractions with her 
when she comes down to breakfast, — she is a 
very pleasant maid. 

Talk is that form of human speech which is 
exempt from all duties, foreign and domestic. 
It is the nearest thing in the world to thinking 
and feeling aloud. It is necessarily not for pub- 
lication, — solely an evidence of good faith and 
mutual kindness. You tell me what you have 
seen and what you are thinking about, because 
you take it for granted that it will interest and 
entertain me ; and you listen to my replies and 
the recital of my adventures and opinions, be- 
cause you know I like to tell them, and because 
you find something in them, of one kind or 

another, that you care to hear. It is a nice 

59 



TALEAB1LITY 

game, with easy, simple rules, and endless possi- 
bilities of variation. And if we go into it with 
the right spirit, and play it for love, without 
heavy stakes, the chances are that if we happen 
to be fairly talkable people we shall have one of 
the best things in the world, — a mighty good 
talk. 

What is there in this anxious, hide-bound, 
tiresome existence of ours, more restful and 
remunerative ? Montaigne says, " The use of it 
is more sweet than of any other action of life ; 
and for that reason it is that, if I were compelled 
to choose, I should sooner, I think, consent to 
lose my sight than my hearing and speech." 
The very aimlessness with which it proceeds, the 
serene disregard of all considerations of profit 
and propriety with which it follows its wander- 
ing course, and brings up anywhere or nowhere, 
to camp for the night, is one of its attractions. 
It is like a day's fishing, not valuable chiefly for 
the fish you bring home, but for the pleasant 
country through which it leads you, and the 
state of personal well-being and health in which 
it leaves you, warmed, and cheered, and more 
content with life and friendship. 

The order in which you set out upon a talk, 
the path which you pursue, the rules which you 
observe or disregard, make but little difference 
in the end. You may follow the advice of Im- 

60 



TALKABILITY 

manuel Kant if you like, and begin with the 
weather and the roads, and go on to current 
events, and wind up with history, art, and phi- 
losophy. Or you may reverse the order if you 
prefer, like that admirable talker Clarence K., 
who usually sets sail on some highly abstract 
paradox, such as " Civilization is a nervous 
disease," and lands in a tale of adventure in 
Mexico or the Rocky Mountains. Or you may 
follow the example of Edward E., who starts in 
at the middle and works out at either end, and 
sometimes at both. It makes no difference. If 
the thing is in you at all, you will find good mat- 
ter for talk anywhere along the route. Hear 
what Montaigne says again : " In our discourse 
all subjects are alike to me ; let there be neither 
weight nor depth, 't is all one ; there is yet grace 
and pertinacity ; all there is tinted with a ma- 
ture and constant judgment, and mixed with 
goodness, freedom, gayety, and friendship." 

How close to the mark the old essayist sends 
his arrow ! He is right about the essential qual- 
ities of good talk. They are not merely intel- 
lectual. They are moral. Goodness of heart, 
freedom of spirit, gayety of temper, and friend- 
liness of disposition, — these are four fine things, 
and doubtless as acceptable to God as they are 
agreeable to men. The talkability which springs 
out of these qualities has its roots in a good soil. 

61 



TALKABILITY 

On such a plant one need not look for the poison 
berries of malign discourse, nor for the Dead 
Sea apples of frivolous mockery. But fair fruit 
will be there, pleasant to the sight and good for 
food, brought forth abundantly according to the 
season. 

Ill 

VARIATIONS — ON A PLEASANT PHRASE FROM MON- 
TAIGNE 

Montaigne has given as our text, " Goodness, 
freedom, gayety, and friendship," — these are 
the conditions which produce talkability. And 
on this fourfold theme we may embroider a few 
variations, by way of exposition and enlargement. 

Goodness is the first thing and the most need- 
ful. An ugly, envious, irritable disposition is 
not fitted for talk. The occasions for offence 
are too numerous, and the way into strife is too 
short and easy. A touch of good-natured com- 
bativeness, a fondness for brisk argument, a 
readiness to try a friendly bout with any comer, 
on any ground, is a decided advantage in a 
talker. It breaks up the offensive monotony of 
polite concurrence, and makes things lively. 
But quarrelsomeness is quite another affair, and 
very fatal. 

I am always a little uneasy in a discourse with 
the Reverend Bellicosus Macduff. It is like 

62 



TALKABILITY 

playing golf on links liable to earthquakes. 
One never knows when the landscape be thrown 
into convulsions. Macduff has a tendency to 
regard a difference of opinion as a personal in- 
sult. If he makes a bad stroke he seems to 
think that the way to retrieve it is to deliver the 
next one on the head of the other player. He 
does not tarry for the invitation to lay on ; and 
before you know what has happened you find 
yourself in a position where you are obliged to 
cry, " Hold, enough ! ' and to be liberally 
damned without any bargain to that effect. 
This is discouraging, and calculated to make 
one wish that human intercourse might be put, 
as far as Macduff is concerned, upon the gold 
basis of silence. 

On the other hand, what a delight it was to 
talk with that old worthy, Chancellor Howard 
Crosby. He was a fighting man for four or five 
generations back, Dutch on one side, English on 
the other. But there was not one little drop of 
gall in his blood. His opinions were fixed to a 
degree ; he loved to do battle for them ; he 
never changed them — at least never in the 
course of the same discussion. He admired and 
respected a gallant adversary, and urged him 
on, with quips and puns and daring assaults and 
unqualified statements, to do his best. Easy 
victories were not to his taste. Even if he 

63 



TALKABILITY 

joined with you in laying out some common 
falsehood for burial, you might be sure that be- 
fore the affair was concluded there would be 
every prospect of what an Irishman would call 
" an elegant wake." If you stood up against 
him on one of his favorite subjects of discussion 
you must be prepared for hot work. You would 
have to take off your coat. But when it was 
over he would be the man to help you on with 
it again ; and you would walk home together 
arm in arm, through the twilight, smoking the 
pipe of peace. Talk like that does good. It 
quickens the beating of the heart, and leaves no 
scars upon it. 

But this manly spirit, which loves 

" To drink delight of battle with its peers," 

is a very different thing from that mean, bad, 
hostile temper which loves to inflict wounds and 
injuries just for the sake of showing power, and 
which is never so happy as when it is making 
some one wince. There are such people in the 
world, and sometimes their brilliancy tempts us 
to forget their malignancy. But to have much 
converse with them is as if we should make play- 
mates of rattlesnakes for their grace of move- 
ment and swiftness of stroke. 

I knew a man once (I will not name him 
even with an initial) who was malignant to 

64 



TALEABILITY 

the core. Learned, industrious, accomplished, 
he kept all his talents at the service of a per- 
fect genius for hatred. If you crossed his path 
but once, he would never cease to curse you. 
The grave might close over you, but he would 
revile your epitaph and mock at your memory. 
It was not even necessary that you should do 
anything to incur his enmity. It was enough 
to be upright and sincere and successful, to 
waken the wrath of this Shimei. Integrity was 
an offence to him, and excellence of any kind 
filled him with spleen. There was no good 
cause within his horizon that he did not give a 
bad word to, and no decent man in the com- 
munity whom he did not try either to use or to 
abuse. To listen to him or to read what he 
had written was to learn to think a little worse 
of every one that he mentioned, and worst of 
all of him. He had the air of a gentleman, the 
vocabulary of a scholar, the style of a Junius, 
and the heart of a Thersites. 

Talk, in such company, is impossible. The 
sense of something evil, lurking beneath the play 
of wit, is like the knowledge that there are 
snakes in the grass. Every step must be taken 
with fear. But the real pleasure of a walk 
through the meadow comes from the feeling of 
security, of ease, of safe and happy abandon to 
the mood of the moment. This ungirdled and 

65 



TALKABILITY 

unguarded felicity in mutual discourse depends, 
after all, upon the assurance of real goodness in 
your companion. I do not mean a stiff impec- 
cability of conduct. Prudes and Pharisees are 
poor comrades. I mean simply goodness of 
heart, the wholesome, generous, kindly quality 
which thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things, and wish- 
eth well to all men. Where you feel this qual- 
ity you can let yourself go, in the ease of hearty 
talk. 

Freedom is the second note that Montaigne 
strikes, and it is essential to the harmony of 
talking. Very careful, prudent, precise persons 
are seldom entertaining in familiar speech. They 
are like tennis players in too fine clothes. They 
think more of their costume than of the game. 

A mania for absolutely correct pronunciation 
is fatal. The people who are afflicted with this 
painful ailment are as anxious about their utter- 
ance as dyspeptics about their diet. They move 
through their sentences as delicately as Agag 
walked. Their little airs of nicety, their starched 
cadences and frilled phrases seem as if they 
had just been taken out of a literary bandbox. 
If perchance you happen to misplace an accent, 
you shall see their eyebrows curl up like an in- 
terrogation mark, and they will ask you what 

66 



TALKABILITY 

authority you have for that pronunciation. As 
if, forsooth, a man could not talk without book- 
license ! As if he must have a permit from some 
dusty lexicon before he can take a good word 
into his mouth and speak it out like the people 
with whom he has lived ! 

The truth is that the man who is very partic- 
ular not to commit himself, in pronunciation or 
otherwise, and talks as if his remarks were being 
taken down in shorthand, and shudders at the 
thought of making a mistake, will hardly be able 
to open your heart or let out the best that is in 
his own. 

Reserve and precision are a great protection 
to overrated reputations ; but they are death to 
talk. 

In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor 
elegance of enunciation that charms us ; it is 
spirit, verve, the sudden turn of humour, the 
keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a 
touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delight- 
ful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed 
beautiful thoughts. Who that ever talked with 
the poet Tennyson, when he let himself go, over 
the pipes, would miss the savour of his broad- 
rolling Lincolnshire vowels, now heightening the 
humour, now deepening the pathos, of his genu- 
ine manly speech ? There are many good stories 
lingering in the memories of those who knew 

67 



TALKABILITY 

Dr. James McCosh, the late president of Prince- 
ton University, — stories too good, I fear, to get 
into a biography ; but the best of them, in print, * 
would not have the snap and vigour of the poor- 
est of them, in talk, with his own inimitable 
Scotch-Irish brogue to set it forth. 

A brogue is not a fault. It is a beauty, an 
heirloom, a distinction. A local accent is like 
a landed inheritance ; it marks a man's place in 
the world, tells where he comes from. Of course 
it is possible to have too much of it. A man 
does not need to carry the soil of his whole farm 
around with him on his boots. But, within lim- 
its, the accent of a native region is delightful. 
'T is the flavour of heather in the grouse, the 
taste of wild herbs and evergreen-buds in the 
venison. I like the maple-sugar tang of the 
Vermonter's sharp-edged speech ; the round, 
full-waisted r's of Pennsylvania and Ohio ; the 
soft, indolent vowels of the South. One of the 
best talkers now living is a schoolmaster from 
Virginia, Colonel Gordon McCabe. I once 
crossed the ocean with him on a stream of sto- 
ries that reached from Liverpool to New York. 
He did not talk in the least like a book. He 
talked like a Virginian. 

When Montaigne mentions gayety as the third 
element of satisfying discourse, I fancy he does 

68 



TALKABILITY 

not mean mere fun, though that has its value at 
the right time and place. But there is another 
quality which is far more valuable and always 
fit. Indeed it underlies the best fun and makes 
it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper 
which makes the best of things and squeezes the 
little drops of honey even out of thistle-blos- 
soms. I think this is what Montaigne meant. 
Certainly it is what he had. 

Cheerfulness is the background of all good 
talk. A sense of humour is a means of grace. 
With it I have heard a pleasant soul make even 
that most perilous of all subjects, the description 
of a long illness, entertaining. The various 
physicians moved through the recital as excel- 
lent comedians, and the medicines appeared like 
a succession of timely jests. 

There is no occasion upon which this precious 
element of talkability comes out stronger than 
when we are on a journey. Travel with a cheer- 
less and easily discouraged companion is an un- 
adulterated misery. But a cheerful comrade is 
better than a waterproof coat and a foot- warmer. 

I remember riding once with my lady Gray- 
gown fifteen miles through a cold rainstorm, 
in an open buckboard, over the worst road in 
the world from Lac a la Belle Riviere to the 
Metabetchouan Biver. Such was the cheerful- 
ness of her ejaculations (the only possible form 

69 



TALKABILITY 

of talk) that we arrived at our destination as 
warm and merry as if we had been sitting be- 
side a roaring camp-fire. 

But after all, the very best thing in good talk, 
and the thing that helps it most, is friendship. 
How it dissolves the barriers that divide us, and 
loosens all constraint, and diffuses itself like 
some fine old cordial through all the veins of 
life — this feeling that we understand and trust 
each other, and wish each other heartily well ! 
Everything into which it really comes is good. 
It transforms letter-writing from a task into a 
pleasure. It makes music a thousand times 
more sweet. The people who play and sing not 
at us, but to us, — how delightful it is to listen 
to them ! Yes, there is a talkability that can 
express itself even without words. There is an 
exchange of thought and feeling which is happy 
alike in speech and in silence. It is quietness 
pervaded with friendship. 

Having come thus far in the exposition of 
Montaigne, I shall conclude with an opinion of 
my own, even though I cannot quote a sentence 
of his to back it. 

The one person of all the world in whom talk- 
ability is most desirable, and talkativeness least 
endurable, is a wife. 

70 



IV 
A WILD STRAWBERRY 



" Such is the story of the Boblink ; once spiritual, musical, admired, 
the joy of the meadows^ and the favourite bird of spring ; finally a 
gross little sensualist who expiates his sensuality in the larder. His 
story contains a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds and little 
boys ; warning them to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits 
which raised him to so high a pitch of poptdarity during the early part 
of his career ; btit to eschew all tendency to that gross and dissipated 
indulgence, which brought this mistaken little bird to an untimely end." 
— Washington Irving: Wolf erf s Roost. 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

The Swiftwater brook was laughing softly to 
itself as it ran through a strip of hemlock forest 
on the edge of the Woodlings' farm. Among 
the evergreen branches overhead the gayly- 
dressed warblers, — little dandies of the forest, 
— were flitting to and fro, lisping their June 
songs of contented love : milder, slower, lazier 
notes than those in which they voiced the amour- 
ous raptures of May. Prince's Pine and golden 
loose-strife and pink laurel and blue hare-bells 
and purple-fringed orchids, and a score of lovely 
flowers were all abloom. The late spring had 
hindered some ; the sudden heats of early sum- 
mer had hastened others ; and now they seemed 
to come out all together, as if Nature had sud- 
denly tilted up her cornucopia and poured forth 
her treasures in spendthrift joy. 

I lay on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, 
filling my pipe after a frugal lunch, and thinking 
how hard it would be to find in any quarter of 
the globe a place more fair and fragrant than 
this hidden vale among the Alleghany Moun- 
tains. The perfume of the flowers of the forest 

73 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent 
of tropical blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda 
could give a fragrance half so magical as the 
fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft 
carpeted with the green of glossy vines above 
whose tiny leaves, in delicate profusion, 

" The slight Linncea hangs its twin-born heads." 

Nor are there any birds in Africa, or among the 
Indian Isles, more exquisite in colour than these 
miniature warblers, showing their gold and 
green, their orange and black, their blue and 
white, against the dark background of the rho- 
dodendron thicket. 

But how seldom we put a cup of pleasure to 
our lips without a dash of bitters, a touch of 
faultfinding. My drop of discontent, that day, 
was the thought that the northern woodland, at 
least in June, yielded no fruit to match its beauty 
and its fragrance. 

There is good browsing among the leaves of 
the wood and the grasses of the meadow, as 
every well-instructed angler knows. The bright 
emerald tips that break from the hemlock and 
the balsam like verdant flames have a pleasant 
savour to the tongue. The leaves of the sassa- 
fras are full of spice, and the bark of the black- 
birch twigs holds a fine cordial. Crinkle-root is 
spicy, but you must partake of it delicately, or 

74 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

it will bite your tongue. Spearmint and pepper- 
mint never lose their charm for the palate that 
still remembers the delights of youth. Wild 
sorrel has an agreeable, sour, shivery flavour. 
Even the tender stalk of a young blade of grass 
is a thing that can be chewed by a person of 
childlike mind with much contentment. 

But, after all, these are only relishes. They 
whet the appetite more than they appease it. 
There should be something to eat, in the June 
woods, as perfect in its kind, as satisfying to the 
sense of taste, as the birds and the flowers are 
to the senses of sight and hearing and smell. 
Blueberries are good, but they are far away in 
July. Blackberries are luscious when they are 
fully ripe, but that will not be until August. 
Then the fishing will be over, and the angler's 
hour of need will be past. The one thing that 
is lacking now beside this mountain stream is 
some fruit more luscious and dainty than grows 
in the tropics, to melt upon the lips and fill the 
mouth with pleasure. 

But that is what these cold northern woods 
will not offer. They are too reserved, too lofty, 
too puritanical to make provision for the grosser 
wants of humanity. They are not friendly to 
luxury. 

Just then, as I shifted my head to find a 
softer pillow of moss after this philosophic and 

75 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

immoral reflection, Nature gave me her silent 
answer. Three wild strawberries, nodding on 
their long stems, hung over my face. It was an 
invitation to taste and see that they were good. 

The berries were not the round and rosy ones 
of the meadow, but the long, slender, dark 
crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; 
no more on that vine ; but each one as it touched 
my lips was a drop of nectar and a crumb of 
ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the pun- 
gent sweetness of the wildwood, sapid, pene- 
trating, and delicious. I tasted the odour of a 
hundred blossoms and the green shimmering of 
innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted 
sunbeams and the breath of highland breezes 
and the song of many birds and the murmur of 
flowing streams, — all in a wild strawberry. 

Do you remember, in The Compleat Angler, 
a remark which Isaak Walton quotes from a 
certain "Doctor Boteler" about strawberries? 
" Doubtless" said that wise old man, " God 
could have made a better berry, but doubtless 
God never did" 

Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God 
made. 

I think it would have been pleasant to know 
a man who could sum up his reflections upon 
the important question of berries in such a 

76 




" Nature gave me her silent answer.' 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

pithy saying as that which Walton repeats. His 
tongue must have been in close communication 
with his heart. He must have had a fair sense 
of that sprightly humour without which piety 
itself is often insipid. 

I have often tried to find out more about him, 
and some day I hope I shall. But up to the 
present, all that the books have told me of this 
obscure sage is that his name was William 
Butler, and that he was an eminent physician, 
sometimes called " the ^Esculapius of his age." 
He was born at Ipswich, in 1535, and educated 
at Clare Hall, Cambridge ; in the neighbourhood 
of which town he appears to have spent the 
most of his life, in high repute as a practitioner 
of physic. He had the honour of doctoring King 
Charles the First after an accident on the hunt- 
ing field, and must have proved himself a plea- 
sant old fellow, for the king looked him up at 
Cambridge the next year, and spent an hour in 
his lodgings. This wise physician also invented 
a medicinal beverage called " Doctor Butler's 
Ale." I do not quite like the sound of it, but 
perhaps it was better than its name. This 
much is sure, at all events : either it was really 
a harmless drink, or else the doctor must have 
confined its use entirely to his patients ; for he 
lived to the ripe age of eighty-three years. 

Between the time when William Butler first 

77 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

needed the services of a physician, in 1535, and 
the time when he last prescribed for a patient, 
in 1618, there was plenty of trouble in England. 
Bloody Queen Mary sat on the throne; and 
there were all kinds of quarrels about religion 
and politics ; and Catholics and Protestants were 
killing one another in the name of God. After 
that the red-haired Elizabeth, called the Virgin 
Queen, wore the crown, and waged triumphant 
war and tempestuous love. Then fat James of 
Scotland was made king of Great Britain ; and 
Guy Fawkes tried to blow him up with gun- 
powder, and failed ; and the king tried to blow 
out all the pipes in England with his Coun- 
terblast Against Tobacco; but he failed too. 
Somewhere about that time, early in the seven- 
teenth century, a very small event happened. A 
new berry was brought over from Virginia, — 
Fragraria Virginiana, — and then, amid wars 
and rumours of wars, Doctor Butler's happiness 
was secure. That new berry was so much richer 
and sweeter and more generous than the familiar 
Fragraria vesca of Europe, that it attracted 
the sincere interest of all persons of good taste. 
It inaugurated a new era in the history of the 
strawberry. The long lost masterpiece of Para- 
dise was restored to its true place in the affec- 
tions of man. 

Is there not a touch of merry contempt for all 

78 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

the vain controversies and conflicts of humanity 
in the grateful ejaculation with which the old 
doctor greeted that peaceful, comforting gift of 
Providence ? 

" From this time forward," he seems to say, 
" the fates cannot beggar me, for I have eaten 
strawberries. With every Maytime that visits 
this distracted island, the white blossoms with 
hearts of gold will arrive. In every June the 
red drops of pleasant savour will hang among 
the scalloped leaves. The children of this world 
may wrangle and give one another wounds that 
even my good ale cannot cure. Nevertheless, 
the earth as God created it is a fair dwelling 
and full of comfort for all who have a quiet mind 
and a thankful heart. Doubtless God might 
have made a better world, but doubtless this is 
the world He made for us ; and in it He planted 
the strawberry." 

Fine old doctor ! Brave philosopher of cheer- 
fulness ! The Virginian berry should have been 
brought to England sooner, or you should have 
lived longer, at least to a hundred years, so that 
you might have welcomed a score of strawberry- 
seasons with gratitude and an epigram. 

Since that time a great change has passed 
over the fruit which Doctor Butler praised so 
well. That product of creative art which Divine 
wisdom did not choose to surpass, human in- 

79 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

dustry has laboured to improve. It has grown 
immensely in size and substance. The traveller 
from America who steams into Queenstown har- 
bour in early summer is presented (for a con- 
sideration) with a cabbage-leaf full of pale-hued 
berries, sweet and juicy, any one of which would 
outbulk a dozen of those that used to grow in 
Virginia when Pocahontas was smitten with the 
charms of Captain John Smith. They are su- 
perb, those light-tinted Irish strawberries. And 
there are wonderful new varieties developed in 
the gardens of New Jersey and Rhode Island, 
which compare with the ancient berries of the 
woods and meadows as Leviathan with a minnow. 
The huge crimson cushions hang among the 
plants so thick that they seem like bunches of 
fruit with a few leaves attached for ornament. 
You can satisfy your hunger in such a berry- 
patch in ten minutes, while out in the field you 
must pick for half an hour, and in the forest 
thrice as long, before you can fill a small tin 
cup. 

Yet, after all, it is questionable whether men 
have really bettered God's chef d'oeuvre in the 
berry line. They have enlarged it and made it 
more plentiful and more certain in its harvest. 
But sweeter, more fragrant, more poignant in 
its flavour? No. The wild berry still stands 
first in its subtle gusto. 

80 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

Size is not the measure of excellence. Per- 
fection lies in quality, not in quantity. Con- 
centration enhances pleasure, gives it a point so 
that it goes deeper. 

Is not a ten-inch trout better than a ten-foot 
sturgeon ? I would rather read a tiny essay by 
Charles Lamb than a five-hundred page libel 
on life by a modern British novelist who shall 
be nameless. Flavour is the priceless quality. 
Style is the thing that counts and is remem- 
bered, in literature, in art, and in berries. 

No Jocunda, nor Triumph, nor Victoria, nor 
any other high-titled fruit that ever took the 
first prize at an agricultural fair, is half so deli- 
cate and satisfying as the wild strawberry that 
dropped into my mouth, under the hemlock tree, 
beside the Swiftwater. 

A touch of surprise is essential to perfect 
sweetness. 

To get what you have been wishing for is 
pleasant ; but to get what you have not been 
sure of, makes the pleasure tingle. A new door 
of happiness is opened when you go out to hunt 
for something and discover it with your own 
eyes. But there is an experience even better 
than that. When you have stupidly forgotten 
(or despondently forgone) to look about you 
for the unclaimed treasures and unearned 
blessings which are scattered along the by-ways 

81 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

of life, then, sometimes by a special mercy, a 
small sample of them is quietly laid before you 
so that you cannot help seeing it, and it brings 
you back, mighty sweetly, to a sense of the joy- 
ful possibilities of living. 

How full of enjoyment is the search after 
wild things, — wild birds, wild flowers, wild 
honey, wild berries ! There was a country club 
on Storm King Mountain, above the Hudson 
River, where they used to celebrate a festival 
of flowers every spring. Men and women who 
had conservatories of their own, full of rare 
plants and costly orchids, came together to 
admire the gathered blossoms of the woodlands 
and meadows. But the people who had the best 
of the entertainment were the boys and girls 
who wandered through the thickets and down the 
brooks, pushed their way into the tangled copses 
and crept venturesomely across the swamps, to 
look for the flowers. Some of the seekers may 
have had a few gray hairs ; but for that day at 
least they were all boys and girls. Nature was 
as young as ever, and they were all her children. 
Hand touched hand without a glove. The hid- 
den blossoms of friendship unfolded. Laughter 
and merry shouts and snatches of half-forgot- 
ten song rose to the lips. Gay adventure spar- 
kled in the air. School was out and nobody 
listened for the bell. It was just a day to live, 

82 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

and be natural, and take no thought for the 
morrow. 

There is great luck in this affair of looking 
for flowers. I do not see how any one who is 
prejudiced against games of chance can consist- 
ently undertake it. 

For my own part, I approve of garden flowers 
because they are so orderly and so certain ; but 
wild flowers I love, just because there is so 
much chance about them. Nature is all in 
favour of certainty in great laws and of uncer- 
tainty in small events. You cannot appoint the 
day and the place for her flower-shows. If you 
happen to drop in at the right moment she will 
give you a free admission. But even then it 
seems as if the table of beauty had been spread 
for the joy of a higher visitor, and in obedience 
to secret orders which you have not heard. 

Have you ever found the fringed gentian ? 

' ' Just before the snows, 
There came a purple creature 

That lavished all the hill ; 
And summer hid her forehead, 

And mockery was still. 

The frosts were her condition : 

The Tyrian would not come 
Until the North evoked her, — 

1 Creator, shall I bloom ? ' " 

There are strange freaks of fortune in the 
finding of wild flowers, and curious coincidences 

83 



A WILD STBAWBERRY 

which make us feel as if some one were playing 
friendly tricks on us. I remember reading, 
one evening in May, a passage in a good book 
called The Procession of the Flower s, in which 
Colonel Higginson describes the singular luck 
that a friend of his enjoyed, year after year, in 
finding the rare blossoms of the double rue- 
anemone. It seems that this man needed only 
to take a walk in the suburbs of anv town, and 
he would come upon a bed of these flowers, 
without effort or design. I envied him his 
good fortune, for I had never discovered even 
one of them. But the next morning, as I 
strolled out to fish the Swiftwater, down below 
Billy Lerns's spring-house I found a green bank 
in the shadow of the wood all bespangled with 
tiny, trembling, twofold stars, — double rue- 
anemones, for luck ! It was a favourable omen, 
and that day I came home with a creel full of 
trout. 

The theory that Adam lived out in the woods 
for some time before he was put into the garden 
of Eden " to dress it and to keep it " has an 
air of probability. How else shall we account 
for the arboreal instincts that cling to his pos- 
terity? 

There is a wilding strain in our blood that all 
the civilization in the world will not eradicate. 
I never knew a real boy — or, for that matter, 

84 



A WILD STEAWBEBRT 

a girl worth knowing — who would not rather 
climb a tree, any day, than walk up a golden 
stairway. 

It is a touch of this instinct, I suppose, that 
makes it more delightful to fish in the most 
insignificant of free streams than in a carefully 
stocked and preserved pond, where the fish are 
brought up by hand and fed on minced liver. 
Such elaborate precautions to ensure good luck 
extract all the spice from the sport of angling. 
Casting the fly in such a pond, if you hooked a 
fish, you might expect to hear the keeper say, 
" Ah, that is Charles, we will play him and put 
him back, if you please, sir ; for the master is 
very fond of him," — or, "Now you have got hold 
of Edward ; let us land him and keep him ; he 
is three years old this month, and just ready to 
be eaten." It would seem like taking trout out 
of cold storage. 

Who could find any pleasure in angling for 
the tame carp in the fish-pool of Fontainebleau ? 
They gather at the marble steps, those venera- 
ble, courtly fish, to receive their rations; and 
there are veterans among them, in ancient 
livery, with fringes of green moss on their 
shoulders, who could tell you pretty tales of 
being fed by the white hands of maids of hon- 
our, or even of nibbling their crumbs of bread 
from the jewelled fingers of a princess. 

85 



A WILD STRAWBERRY 

There is no sport in bringing pets to the 
table. It may be necessary sometimes ; but the 
true sportsman would always prefer to leave 
the unpleasant task of execution to menial 
hands, while he goes out into the wild country 
to capture his game by his own skill, — if he has 
good luck. I would rather run some risk in this 
enterprise (even as the young Tobias did, when 
the voracious pike sprang at him from the waters 
of the Tigris, and would have devoured him but 
for the friendly instruction of the piscatory 
Angel, who taught Tobias how to land the mon- 
ster), — I would far rather take any number of 
chances in my sport than have it domesticated to 
the point of dulness. 

The trim plantations of trees which are called 
" forests " in certain parts of Europe — scien- 
tifically pruned and tended, counted every year 
by uniformed foresters, and defended against 
all possible depredations — are admirable and 
useful in their way ; but they lack the mystic 
enchantment of the fragments of native wood- 
land which linger among the Adirondacks and 
the White Mountains, or the vast, shaggy, syl- 
van wildernesses which hide the lakes and rivers 
of Canada. These Laurentian Hills lie in No 
Man's Land. Here you do not need to keep 
to the path, for there is none. You may make 
your own trail, whithersoever fancy leads you ; 

86 



A WILD STBAWBERRY 

and at night you may pitch your tent under any 
tree that looks friendly and firm. 

Here, if anywhere, you shall find Dryads, 
and Naiads, and Oreads. And if you chance 
to see one, by moonlight, combing her long hair 
beside the glimmering waterfall, or slipping 
silently, with gleaming shoulders, through the 
grove of silver birches, you may call her by the 
name that pleases you best. She is all your 
own discovery. There is no social directory in 
the wilderness. 

One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its 
satisfaction in the regular, the proper, the con- 
ventional. But there is another side of our 
nature, underneath, that takes delight in the 
strange, the free, the spontaneous. We like to 
discover what we call a law of Nature, and 
make our calculations about it, and harness the 
force which lies behind it for our own purposes. 
But we taste a different kind of joy when an 
event occurs which nobody has foreseen or 
counted upon. It seems like an evidence that 
there is something in the world which is alive 
and mysterious and untrammelled. 

The weather-prophet tells us of an approach- 
ing storm. It comes according to the pro- 
gramme. We admire the accuracy of the 
prediction, and congratulate ourselves that we 
have such a good meteorological service. But 

87 



A WILD STBAWBEREY 

when, perchance, a bright, crystalline piece of 
weather arrives instead of the foretold tempest, 
do we not feel a secret sense of pleasure which 
goes beyond our mere comfort in the sunshine ? 
The whole affair is not as easy as a sum in sim- 
ple addition, after all, — at least not with our 
present knowledge. It is a good joke on the 
Weather Bureau. " Aha, Old Probabilities ! " 
we say, " you don't know it all yet ; there are 
still some chances to be taken ! " 

Some day, I suppose, all things in the heavens 
above, and in the earth beneath, and in the 
hearts of the men and women who dwell between, 
will be investigated and explained. We shall 
live a perfectly ordered life, with no accidents, 
happy or unhappy. Everybody will act accord- 
ing to rule, and there will be no dotted lines 
on the map of human existence, no regions 
marked " unexplored." Perhaps that golden 
age of the machine will come, but you and I 
will hardly live to see it. And if that seems to 
you a matter for tears, you must do your own 
weeping, for I cannot find it in my heart to add 
a single drop of regret. 

The results of education and social discipline 
in humanity are fine. It is a good thing that 
we can count upon them. But at the same time 
let us rejoice in the play of native traits and 
individual vagaries. Cultivated manners are ad- 

88 



A WILD STEAWBEEBY 

mirable, yet there is a sudden touch of inborn 
grace and courtesy that goes beyond them all. 
No array of accomplishments can rival the 
charm of an unsuspected gift of nature, brought 
suddenly to light. I once heard a peasant girl 
singing down the Traunthal, and the echo of 
her song outlives, in the hearing of my heart, 
all memories of the grand opera. 

The harvest of the gardens and the orchards, 
the result of prudent planting and patient cul- 
tivation, is full of satisfaction. We anticipate 
it in due season, and when it comes we fill our 
mouths and are grateful. But pray, kind Provi- 
dence, let me slip over the fence out of the 
garden now and then, to shake a nut-tree that 
grows untended in the wood. Give me liberty 
to put off my black coat for a day, and go 
a-fishing on a free stream, and find by chance 
a wild strawberry. 



89 



V 
LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 



" He insisted that the love that was of real value in the world wasn't in- 
teresting ; and that the love that was interesting' was rft always admir- 
able. Love that happened to a person like the measles or Jits, and was 
really of no particular credit to itself or its victims, was the sort that 
got into the books a?id was made much of ; whereas the kind that was 
aitauied by the endeavour of true souls, and tliat had wear in it, and 
that made things go right instead of tatigling them up, was too much 
like duty to make satisfactory reading for people of sentiment.*'' — 
E. S. Martin: My Cousin Anthony. 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

The first day of spring is one thing, and the 
first spring day is another. The difference be- 
tween them is sometimes as great as a month. 

The first day of spring is due to arrive, if the 
calendar does not break down, about the twenty- 
first of March, when the earth turns the corner 
of Sun Alley and starts for Summer Street. 
But the first spring day is not on the time-table 
at all. It comes when it is ready, and in the 
latitude of New York this is usually not till after 
All Fools' Day. 

About this time, — 

" When chinks in April's windy dome 
Let through a day of June, 
And foot and thought incline to roam, 
And every sound 's a tune," — 

it is the habit of the angler who lives in town to 
prepare for the labours of the approaching sea- 
son by longer walks or bicycle-rides in the parks, 
or along the riverside, or in the somewhat de- 
moralized Edens of the suburbs. In the course 
of these vernal peregrinations and circumrota- 

93 



LOVEBS AND LANDSCAPE 

tions, I observe that lovers of various kinds 
begin to occupy a notable place in the landscape. 

The burnished dove puts a livelier iris around 
his neck, and practises fantastic bows and amour- 
ous quicksteps along the verandah of the pigeon- 
house and on every convenient roof. The young 
male of the human species, less gifted in the 
matter of rainbows, does his best w?fti a gay 
cravat, and turns the thoughts which circulate 
above it towards the securing or propitiating of 
a best girl. 

The objects of these more or less brilliant 
attentions, doves and girls, show a becoming 
reciprocity, and act in a way which leads us 
to infer (so far as inferences hold good in the 
mysterious region of female conduct) that they 
are not seriously displeased. To a rightly tem- 
pered mind, pleasure is a pleasant sight. And 
the philosophic observer who could look upon 
this spring spectacle of the lovers with any but 
friendly feelings would be indeed what the great 
Dr. Samuel Johnson called " a person not to be 
envied." 

Far be it from me to fall into such a desic- 
cated and supercilious mood. My small olive- 
branch of fancy will be withered, in truth, and 
ready to drop budless from the tree, when I 
cease to feel a mild delight in the billings and 
cooings of the little birds that separate from the 

94 




"Falling in love in the good old-fashioned way." 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

flocks to fly together in pairs, or in the unin- 
instructive but mutually satisfactory converse 
which Strephon holds with Chloe while they 
dally along the primrose path. 

I am glad that even the stony and tumultuous 
city affords some opportunities for these ami- 
able observations. In the month of April there 
is hardly a clump of shrubbery in the Central 
Park which will not serve as a trysting-place 
for yellow warblers and catbirds just home from 
their southern tours. At the same time, you 
shall see many a bench, designed for the accom- 
modation of six persons, occupied at the sunset 
hour by only two, and apparently so much too 
small for them that they cannot avoid a little 
crowding. 

These are infallible signs. Taken in conjunc- 
tion with the eruption of tops and marbles 
among the small boys, and the purchase of fish- 
ing-tackle and golf -clubs by the old boys, they 
certify us that the vernal equinox has arrived, 
not only in the celestial regions, but also in the 
heart of man. 

I have, been reflecting of late upon the rela- 
tion of lovers to the landscape, and questioning 
whether art has given it quite the same place as 
that which belongs to it in nature. In fiction, 
for example, and in the drama, and in music, I 

95 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

have some vague misgivings that romantic love 
has come to hold a more prominent and a more 
permanent position than it fills in real life. 

This is dangerous ground to venture upon, 
even in the most modest and deprecatory way. 
The man who expresses an opinion, or even a 
doubt, on this subject, contrary to the ruling 
traditions, will have a swarm of angry critics 
buzzing about him. He will be called a heretic, 
a heathen, a cold-blooded freak of nature. As 
for the woman who hesitates to subscribe all the 
thirty-nine articles of romantic love, if such a 
one dares to put her reluctance into words, she 
is certain to be accused either of unwomanly am- 
bition or of feminine disappointment. 

Let us make haste, then, to get back for safety 
to the ornithological aspect of the subject. Here 
there can be no penalties for heresy. And here 
I make bold to avow my conviction that the 
pairing season is not the only point of interest 
in the life of the birds ; nor is the instinct by 
which they mate altogether and beyond com- 
parison the noblest passion that stirs their fea- 
thered breasts. 

'T is true, the time of mating is their prettiest 
season ; but it is very short. How little we 
should know of the drama of their airy life if 
we had eyes only for this brief scene ! Their 
finest qualities come out in the patient cares 

96 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

that protect the young in the nest, in the varied 
struggles for existence through the changing 
year, and in the incredible heroisms of the an- 
nual migrations. Herein is a parable. 

It may be observed further, without fear of re- 
buke, that the behaviour of the different kinds of 
birds during the prevalence of romantic love is 
not always equally above reproach. The court- 
ship of English sparrows — blustering, noisy, 
vulgar — is a sight to offend the taste of every 
gentle on-looker. Some birds reiterate and voci- 
ferate their love-songs in a fashion that displays 
their inconsiderateness as well as their ignorance 
of music. This trait is most marked in domestic 
fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once, that 
chose to do his wooing close under the window 
of a farm-house where I was lodged. He had 
no regard for my hours of sleep or meditation. 
His amatory click-clack prevented the morning 
and wrecked the tranquillity of the evening. It 
was odious, brutal, — worse, it was absolutely 
thoughtless. Herein is another parable. 

Let us admit cheerfully that lovers have a 
place in the landscape and lend a charm to it. 
This does not mean that they are to take up all 
the room there is. Suppose, for example, that 
a pair of them, on Goat Island, put themselves 
in such a position as to completely block out 
your view of Niagara. You cannot regard them 

97 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

with gratitude. They even become a little te- 
dious. Or suppose that you are visiting at a 
country-house, and you find that you must not 
enjoy the moonlight on the verandah because 
Augustus and Amanda are murmuring in one 
corner, and that you must not go into the gar- 
den because Louis and Lizzie are there, and 
that you cannot have a sail on the lake because 
Richard and Rebecca have taken the boat. 

Of course, unless you happen to be a selfish 
old curmudgeon, you rejoice, by sympathy, in 
the happiness of these estimable young people. 
But you fail to see why it should cover so much 
ground. 

Why should they not pool their interests, and 
all go out in the boat, or all walk in the garden, 
or all sit on the verandah ? Then there would 
be room for somebody else about the place. 

In old times you could rely upon lovers for 
retirement. But nowadays their role seems 
to be a bold ostentation of their condition. 
They rely upon other people to do the timid, 
shrinking part. Society, in America, is ar- 
ranged principally for their convenience ; and 
whatever portion of the landscape strikes their 
fancy, they preempt and occupy. All this goes 
upon the presumption that romantic love is 
really the only important interest in life. 

This train of thought was illuminated, the 

98 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

other night, by an incident which befell me at 
a party. It was an assembly of men, drawn to- 
gether by their common devotion to the sport 
of canoeing. There were only three or four of 
the gentler sex present (as honorary members), 
and only one of whom it could be suspected that 
she was at that time a victim or an object of the 
tender passion. In the course of the evening, 
by way of diversion to our disputations on keels 
and centreboards, canvas and birch-bark, cedar- 
wood and bass-wood, paddles and steering-gear, 
a fine young Apollo, with a big, manly voice, 
sang us a few songs. But he did not chant the 
joys of weathering a sudden squall, or running a 
rapid feather-white with foam, or floating down 
a long, quiet, elm-bowered river. Not at all. 
His songs were full of sighs and yearnings, lan- 
guid lips and sheep's-eyes. His powerful voice 
informed us that crowns of thorns seemed like 
garlands of roses, and kisses were as sweet as 
samples of heaven, and various other curious 
sensations were experienced ; and at the end of 
every stanza the reason was stated, in tones of 

thunder — 

" Because I love you, dear." 

Even if true, it seemed inappropriate. How 
foolish the average audience in a drawing-room 
looks while it is listening to passionate love-dit- 
ties ! And yet I suppose the singer chose these 
L.oiC. 99 



LOVEBS AND LANDSCAPE 

songs, not from any malice aforethought, but 
simply because songs of this kind are so abun- 
dant that it is next to impossible to find any- 
thing else in the shops. 

In regard to novels, the situation is almost as 
discouraging. Ten love-stories are printed to 
one of any other kind. We have a standing 
invitation to consider the tribulations and diffi- 
culties of some young man or young woman in 
finding a mate. It must be admitted that the 
subject has its capabilities of interest. Nature 
has her uses for the lover, and she gives him an 
excellent part to play in the drama of life. But 
is this tantamount to saying that his interest is 
perennial and all-absorbing, and that his role on 
the stage is the only one that is significant and 
noteworthy ? 

Life is much too large to be expressed in the 
terms of a single passion. Friendship, patriot- 
ism, parental tenderness, filial devotion, the ar- 
dour of adventure, the thirst for knowledge, the 
ecstasy of religion, — these all have their dwell- 
ing in the heart of man. They mould character. 
They control conduct. They are stars of des- 
tiny shining in the inner firmament. And if art 
would truly hold the mirror up to nature, it must 
reflect these greater and lesser lights that rule 
the day and the night. 

How many of the plays that divert and misin- 

100 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

form the modern theatre-goer turn on the pivot 
of a love-affair, not always pure, but generally 
simple ! And how many of those that are im- 
ported from France proceed upon the theory 
that the Seventh is the only Commandment, 
and that the principal attraction of life lies in 
the opportunity of breaking it ! The matinee- 
girl is not likely to have a very luminous or 
truthful idea of existence floating around in her 
pretty little head. 

But, after all, the great plays, those that take 
the deepest hold upon the heart, like Hamlet 
and King Lear, Macbeth and Othello, are not 
love-plays. And the most charming comedies, 
like The Winter's Tale, and The Rivals, and 
Rip Van Winkle, are chiefly memorable for 
other things than love-scenes. 

Even in novels, love shows at its best when it 
does not absorb the whole plot. Lorna Doone 
is a lovers' story, but there is a blessed mini- 
mum of spooning in it, and always enough of 
working and fighting to keep the air clear and 
fresh. The Heart of Midlothian, and Hypa- 
tia, and JRomola, and The Cloister and the 
Hearth, and John Inglesant, and Tlie Three 
Musketeers, and Notre Dame, and Peace and 
War, and Quo Vadis, — these are great novels 
because they are much more than tales of roman- 
tic love. As for Henry Esmond, (which seems 

101 



LOVEBS AND LANDSCAPE 

to me the best of all,) certainly " love at first 
sight" does not play the finest role in that book. 

There are good stories of our own day — pa- 
thetic, humourous, entertaining, powerful — in 
which the element of romantic love is altogether 
subordinate, or even imperceptible. The Rise 
of Silas Lapham does not owe its deep interest 
to the engagement of the very charming young 
people who enliven it. Madame Delphine and 
Ole ' Str acted are perfect stories of their kind. 
I would not barter The Jungle Boohs for a hun- 
dred of The Brushwood Boy. 

The truth is that love, considered merely as 
the preference of one person for another of the 
opposite sex, is not " the greatest thing in the 
world." It becomes great only when it leads on, 
as it often does, to heroism and self-sacrifice and 
fidelity. Its chief value for art (the interpreter) 
lies not in itself, but in its quickening relation 
to the other elements of life. It must be seen 
and shown in its due proportion, and in harmony 
with the broader landscape. 

Do you believe that in all the world there is 
only one woman specially created for each man, 
and that the order of the universe will be hope- 
lessly askew unless these two needles find each 
other in the haystack ? You believe it for your- 
self, perhaps ; but do you believe it for Tom 
Johnson? You remember what a terrific dis- 

102 



LOVEBS AND LANDSCAPE 

turbance he made in the summer of 1895, at 
Bar Harbor, about Ellinor Brown. You saw 
them together (occasionally) three years after at 
Lenox. Are you honestly of the opinion that if 
Tom had not married Ellinor, these two young 
lives would have been a total wreck ? 

Adam Smith, in his book on The Moral Sen- 
timents, goes so far as to say that " love is not 
interesting to the observer because it is an affec- 
tion of the imagination, into which it is difficult 
for a third party to enter." Something of the 
same kind occurred to me in regard to Tom and 
Ellinor. Yet I would not have presumed to 
suggest this thought to either of them. Nor 
would I have quoted in their hearing the mel- 
ancholy and frigid prediction of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, to the effect that they would some 
day discover " that all which at first drew them 
together — those once sacred features, that ma- 
gical play of charm — was deciduous. 

Deciduous, indeed ? Cold, unpleasant, bo- 
tanical word ! Rather would I prognosticate for 
the lovers something perennial, 

" A sober certainty of waking" bliss," 

to survive the evanescence of love's young 
dream. Ellinor should turn out to be a woman 
like the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of whom 
Richard Steele wrote that " to love her was a 

103 



LOVEBS AND LANDSCAPE 

liberal education." Tom should prove that he 
had in him the lasting stuff of a true man and 
a hero. Then it would make little difference 
whether their conjunction had been eternally 
prescribed in the book of fate or not. It would 
be evidently a fit match, made on earth and 
illustrative of heaven. 

But even in the making of such a match as 
this, the various stages of attraction, infatua- 
tion, and appropriation should not be displayed 
too prominently before the world, nor treated as 
events of overwhelming importance and endur- 
ing moment. I would not counsel Tom and 
Ellinor, in the midsummer of their engagement, 
to have their photographs taken together in 
affectionate attitudes. 

The pictures of an imaginary kind which 
deal with the subject of romantic love are, al- 
most without exception, fatuous and futile. The 
inanely amatory, with their languishing eyes, 
weary us. The endlessly oscillatory, with their 
protracted salutations, are sickening. Even when 
an air of sentimental propriety is thrown about 
them by some such title as " Wedded " or " The 
Honeymoon," they fatigue us. For the most 
part, they remind me of the remark which the 
Commodore made upon a certain painting of 
Jupiter and Io which hangs in the writing-room 
of the Contrary Club. 

104 






LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

"Sir," said that gently piercing critic, "that 
picture is equally unsatisfactory to the artist, to 
the moralist, and to the voluptuary." 

Nevertheless, having made a clean breast of 
my misgivings and reservations on the subject 
of lovers and landscape, I will now confess that 
the whole of my doubts do not weigh much 
against my unreasoned faith in romantic love. 
At heart I am no infidel, but a most obstinate 
believer and devotee. My seasons of skepticism 
are transient. They are connected with a tor- 
pid liver and aggravated by confinement to a 
sedentary life and enforced abstinence from 
angling. Out-of-doors, I return to a saner and 
happier frame of mind. 

As my wheel rolls along the Eiverside Drive 
in the golden glow of the sunset, I rejoice that 
the episode of Charles Henry and Matilda Jane 
has not been omitted from the view. This vast 
and populous city, with all its passing show of 
life, would be little better than a waste, howl- 
ing wilderness if we could not catch a glimpse, 
now and then, of young people falling in love in 
the good old-fashioned way. Even on a trout- 
stream, I have seen nothing prettier than the 
sight upon which I once came suddenly as I was 
fishing down the Neversink. 

A boy was kneeling beside the brook, and a 

105 



LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

girl was giving him a drink of water out of her 
rosy hands. They stared with wonder and com- 
passion at the wet and solitary angler, wading 
down the stream, as if he were some kind of 
a mild lunatic. But as I glanced discreetly at 
their small tableau, I was not unconscious of 
the new joy that came into the landscape with 
the presence of 

" A lover and his lass." 

I knew how sweet the water tasted from that 
kind of a cup. I also have lived in Arcadia, 
and have not forgotten the way back. 



106 



VI 
A FATAL SUCCESS 



" What surprises me in her behaviour" said he, " is its thoroughness. 
Woman seldom does things by halves, but often by doubles." — Solo- 
mon Singlewitz: The Life of Adam. 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

Beekman De Peyster was probably the 
most passionate and triumphant fisherman in the 
Petrine Club. He angled with the same dash 
and confidence that he threw into his operations 
in the stock-market. He was sure to be the first 
man to get his flies on the water at the opening 
of the season. And when we came together for 
our fall meeting, to compare notes of our wan- 
derings on various streams and make up the 
fish-stories for the year, Beekman was almost 
always " high hook." We expected, as a mat- 
ter of course, to hear that he had taken the most 
and the largest fish. 

It was so with everything that he undertook. 
He was a masterful man. If there was an un- 
usually large trout in a river, Beekman knew 
about it before any one else, and got there first, 
and came home with the fish. It did not make 
him unduly proud, because there was nothing 
uncommon about it. It was his habit to suc- 
ceed, and all the rest of us were hardened to it. 

When he married Cornelia Cochrane, we were 

109 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

consoled for our partial loss by the apparent 
fitness and brilliancy of the match. If Beek- 
man was a masterful man, Cornelia was cer- 
tainly what you might call a mistressful woman. 
She had been the head of her house since she 
was eighteen years old. She carried her good 
looks like the family plate ; and when she came 
into the breakfast-room and said good-morning, 
it was with an air as if she presented every one 
with a check for a thousand dollars. Her tastes 
were accepted as judgments, and her preferences 
had the force of laws. Wherever she wanted 
to go in the summer-time, there the finger of 
household destiny pointed. At Newport, at Bar 
Harbour, at Lenox, at Southampton, she made 
a record. When she was joined in holy wed- 
lock to Beekman De Peyster, her father and 
mother heaved a sigh of satisfaction, and settled 
down for a quiet vacation in Cherry Valley. 

It was in the second summer after the wed- 
ding that Beekman admitted to a few of his an- 
cient Petrine cronies, in moments of confidence 
(unjustifiable, but natural), that his wife had 
one fault. 

" It is not exactly a fault," he said, " not a 
positive fault, you know. It is just a kind of 
a defect, due to her education, of course. In 
everything else she 's magnificent. But she 
does n't care for fishing. She says it 's stupid, 

110 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

— can't see why any one should like the woods, 

— calls camping out the lunatic's diversion. It 's 
rather awkward for a man with my habits to 
have his wife take such a view. But it can be 
changed by training. I intend to educate her and 
convert her. I shall make an angler of her yet." 

And so he did. 

The new education was begun in the Adiron- 
dacks, and the first lesson was given at Paul 
Smith's. It was a complete failure. 

Beekman persuaded her to come out with him 
for a day on Meacham River, and promised to 
convince her of the charm of angling. She wore 
a new gown, fawn-colour and violet, with a pic- 
ture-hat, very taking. But the Meacham River 
trout was shy that day ; not even Beekman 
could induce him to rise to the fly. What the 
trout lacked in confidence the mosquitoes more 
than made up. Mrs. De Peyster came home 
much sunburned, and expressed a highly unfa- 
vourable opinion of fishing as an amusement 
and of Meacham River as a resort. 

" The nice people don't come to the Adiron- 
dacks to fish," said she ; " they come to talk 
about the fishing twenty years ago. Besides, 
what do you want to catch that trout for ? If 
you do, the other men will say you bought it, 
and the hotel will have to put in another for the 
rest of the season." 

Ill 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

The following year Beekman tried Moosehead 
Lake. Here he found an atmosphere more fa- 
vourable to his plan of education. There were 
a good many people who really fished, and short 
expeditions in the woods were quite fashionable. 
Cornelia had a camping-costume of the most 
approved style made by Dewlap on Fifth Ave- 
nue, — pearl-gray with linings of rose-silk, — and 
consented to go with her husband on a trip up 
Moose River. They pitched their tent the first 
evening at the mouth of Misery Stream, and a 
storm came on. The rain sifted through the 
canvas in a fine spray, and Mrs. De Peyster sat 
up all night in a waterproof cloak, holding an 
umbrella. The next day they were back at the 
hotel in time for lunch. 

" It was horrid," she told her most intimate 
friend, " perfectly horrid. The idea of sleeping 
in a shower-bath, and eating your breakfast 
from a tin plate, just for sake of catching a few 
silly fish! Why not send your guides out to 
get them for you ? " 

But, in spite of this profession of obstinate 
heresy, Beekman observed with secret joy that 
there were signs, before the end of the season, 
that Cornelia was drifting a little, a very little 
but still perceptibly, in the direction of a change 
of heart. She began to take an interest, as the 
big trout came along in September, in the re- 

112 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

ports of the catches made by the different an- 
glers. She would saunter out with the other 
people to the corner of the porch to see the fish 
weighed and spread out on the grass. Several 
times she went with Beekman in the canoe to 
Hardscrabble Point, and showed distinct evi- 
dences of pleasure when he caught large trout. 
The last day of the season, when he returned 
from a successful expedition to Roach River and 
Lily Bay, she inquired with some particularity 
about the results of his sport ; and in the even- 
ing, as the company sat before the great open 
fire in the hall of the hotel, she was heard to 
use this information with considerable skill in 
putting down Mrs. Minot Peabody of Boston, 
who was recounting the details of her husband's 
catch at Spencer Pond. Cornelia was not a per- 
son to be contented with the back seat, even in 
fish-stories. 

When Beekman observed these indications he 
was much encouraged, and resolved to push his 
educational experiment briskly forward to his 
customary goal of suceess. 

" Some things can be done, as well as others," 
he said in his masterful way, as three of us 
were walking home together after the autumnal 
dinner of the Petrine Club, which he always 
attended as a graduate member. " A real fisher- 
man never gives up. I told you I 'd make an 

113 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

angler out of my wife ; and so I will. It lias 
been rather difficult. She is ' dour ' in rising. 
But she 's beginning to take notice of the fly 
now. Give me another season, and I'll have 
her landed." 

Good old Beekman ! Little did he think — 
But I must not interrupt the story with moral 
reflections. 

The preparations that he made for his final 
effort at conversion were thorough and prudent. 
He had a private interview with Dewlap in regard 
to the construction of a practical fishing-costume 
for a lady, which resulted in something more 
reasonable and workmanlike than had ever been 
turned out by that famous artist. He ordered 
from Hook & Catchett a lady's angling-outfit of 
the most enticing description, — a split-bamboo 
rod, light as a girl's wish, and strong as a ma- 
tron's will ; an oxidized silver reel, with a mono- 
gram on one side, and a sapphire set in the 
handle for good luck ; a book of flies, of all sizes 
and colours, with the correct names inscribed in 
gilt letters on each page. He surrounded his 
favourite sport with an aureole of elegance and 
beauty. And then he took Cornelia in Septem- 
ber to the Upper Dam at Rangeley. 

She went reluctant. She arrived disgusted. 
She stayed incredulous. She returned — Wait 
a bit, and you shall hear how she returned. 

114 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

The Upper Dam at Eaugeley is the place, 
of all others in the world, where the lunacy 
of angling may be seen in its incurable stage. 
There is a cosy little inn, called a camp, at the 
foot of a big lake. In front of the inn is a 
huge dam of gray stone, over which the river 
plunges into a great oval pool, where the trout 
assemble in the early fall to perpetuate their 
race. From the tenth of September to the thir- 
tieth, there is not an hour of the day or night 
when there are no boats floating on that pool, 
and no anglers trailing the fly across its waters. 
Before the late fishermen are ready to come in 
at midnight, the early fishermen may be seen 
creeping down to the shore with lanterns in 
order to begin before cock-crow. The number 
of fish taken is not large, — perhaps five or six 
for the whole company on an average day, — 
but the size is sometimes enormous, — nothing 
under three pounds is counted, — and they per- 
vade thought and conversation at the Upper 
Dam to the exclusion of every other subject. 
There is no driving, no dancing, no golf, no 
tennis. There is nothing to do but fish or die. 

At first, Cornelia thought she would choose 
the latter alternative. But a remark of that 
skilful and morose old angler, McTurk, which 
she overheard on the verandah after supper, 
changed her mind. 

115 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

" Women have no sporting instinct," said he. 
" They only fish because they see men doing it. 
They are imitative animals." 

That same night she told Beekman, in the 
subdued tone which the architectural construc- 
tion of the house imposes upon all confidential 
communications in the bedrooms, but with reso- 
lution in every accent, that she proposed to go 
fishing with him on the morrow. 

" But not on that pool, right in front of the 
house, you understand. There must be some 
other place, out on the lake, where we can fish 
for three or four days, until I get the trick 
of this wobbly rod. Then I'll show that old 
bear, McTurk, what kind of an animal wo- 
man is." 

Beekman was simply delighted. Five days 
of diligent practice at the mouth of Mill Brook 
brought his pupil to the point where he pro- 
nounced her safe. 

" Of course," he said patronizingly, " you 
haven't learned all about it yet. That will 
take years. But you can get your fly out thirty 
feet, and you can keep the tip of your rod up. 
If you do that, the trout will hook himself, in 
rapid water, eight times out of ten. For play- 
ing him, if you follow my directions, you '11 be 
all right. We will try the pool to-night, and 
hope for a medium-sized fish." 

116 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

Cornelia said nothing, but smiled and nodded. 
She had her own thoughts. 

At about nine o'clock Saturday night, they 
anchored their boat on the edge of the shoal 
where the big eddy swings around, put out the 
lantern and began to fish. Beekman sat in the 
bow of the boat, with his rod over the left 
side ; Cornelia in the stern, with her rod over 
the right side. The night was cloudy and very 
black. Each of them had put on the largest 
possible fly, one a " Bee-Pond " and the other a 
" Dragon ; " but even these were invisible. They 
measured out the right length of line, and let the 
flies drift back until they hung over the shoal, 
in the curly water where the two currents meet. 

There were three other boats to the left of 
them. McTurk was their only neighbour in 
the darkness on the right. Once they heard 
him swearing softly to himself, and knew that 
he had hooked and lost a fish. 

Away down at the tail of the pool, dimly 
visible through the gloom, the furtive fisher- 
man, Parsons, had anchored his boat. No noise 
ever came from that craft. If he wished to 
change his position, he did not pull up the an- 
chor and let it down again with a bump. He 
simply lengthened or shortened his anchor rope. 
There was no click of the reel when he played a 
fish. He drew in and paid out the line through 

117 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

the rings by hand, without a sound. What he 
thought when a fish got away, no one knew, for 
he never said it. He concealed his angling as if 
it had been a conspiracy. Twice that night they 
heard a faint splash in the water near his boat, 
and twice they saw him put his arm over the side 
in the darkness and bring it back again very 
quietly. 

" That 's the second fish for Parsons," whis- 
pered Beekman, " what a secretive old Fortuna- 
tus he is ! He knows more about fishing than 
any man on the pool, and talks less." 

Cornelia did not answer. Her thoughts were 
all on the tip of her own rod. About eleven 
o'clock a fine, drizzling rain set in. The fishing 
was very slack. All the other boats gave it up 
in despair ; but Cornelia said she wanted to stay 
out a little longer, they might as well finish up 
the week. 

At precisely fifty minutes past eleven, Beek- 
man reeled up his line, and remarked with firm- 
ness that the holy Sabbath day was almost at 
hand and they ought to go in. 

" Not till I 've landed this trout," said Cor- 
nelia. 

" What ? A trout ! Have you got one ? " 

" Certainly ; I 've had him on for at least 
fifteen minutes. I 'm playing him Mr. Parsons' 
way. You might as well light the lantern and 

118 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

get the net ready ; he 's coming in towards the 
boat now." 

Beekman broke three matches before he made 
the lantern burn ; and when he held it up over 
the gunwale, there was the trout sure enough, 
gleaming ghostly pale in the dark water, close 
to the boat, and quite tired out. He slipped the 
net over the fish and drew it in, — a monster. 

" I '11 carry that trout, if you please," said 
Cornelia, as they stepped out of the boat ; and 
she walked into the camp, on the last stroke of 
midnight", with the fish in her hand, and quietly 
asked for the steelyard. 

Eight pounds and fourteen ounces, — that 
was the weight. Everybody was amazed. It 
was the " best fish " of the year. Cornelia 
showed no sign of exultation, until just as John 
was carrying the trout to the ice-house. Then 
she flashed out : — 

" Quite a fair imitation, Mr. McTurk, — is n't 
it?" 

Now McTurk's best record for the last fifteen 
years was seven pounds and twelve ounces. 

So far as McTurk is concerned, this is the end 
of the story. But not for the De Peysters. I 
wish it were. Beekman went to sleep that night 
with a contented spirit. He felt that his experi- 
ment in education had been a success. He had 
made his wife an angler. 

119 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

He had indeed, and to an extent which he 
little suspected. That Upper Dam trout was 
to her like the first taste of blood to the tiger. 
It seemed to change, at once, not so much her 
character as the direction of her vital energy. 
She yielded to the lunacy of angling, not by 
slow degrees, (as first a transient delusion, then 
a fixed idea, then a chronic infirmity, finally a 
mild insanity,) but by a sudden plunge into the 
most violent mania. So far from being ready 
to die at Upper Dam, her desire now was to live 
there — and to live solely for the sake of fish- 
ing — as long as the season was open. 

There were two hundred and forty hours left 
to midnight on the thirtieth of September. At 
least two hundred of these she spent on the pool ; 
and when Beekman was too exhausted to man- 
age the boat and the net and the lantern for 
her, she engaged a trustworthy guide to take 
Beekman's place while he slept. At the end of 
the last day her score was twenty-three, with an 
average of five pounds and a quarter. His score 
was nine, with an average of four pounds. He 
had succeeded far beyond his wildest hopes. 

The next year his success became even more 
astonishing. They went to the Titan Club in 
Canada. The ugliest and most inaccessible 
sheet of water in that territory is Lake Pha- 
raoh. But it is famous for the extraordinary 

120 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

fishing at a certain spot near the outlet, where 
there is just room enough for one canoe. They 
camped on Lake Pharaoh for six weeks, by- 
Mrs. De Peyster's command ; and her canoe was 
always the first to reach the fishing-ground in 
the morning, and the last to leave it in the even- 
ing. 

Some one asked him, when he returned to the 
city, whether he had good luck. 

" Quite fair," he tossed off in a careless way ; 
" we took over three hundred pounds." 

" To your own rod ? " asked the inquirer, in 
admiration. 

" No-o-o," said Beekman, " there were two 
of us." 

There were two of them, also, the following 
year, when they joined the Natasheebo Salmon 
Club and fished that celebrated river in Labra- 
dor. The custom of drawing lots every night 
for the water that each member was to angle 
over the next day, seemed to be especially de- 
signed to fit the situation. Mrs. De Peyster 
could fish her own pool and her husband's too. 
The result of that year's fishing was something 
phenomenal. She had a score that made a 
paragraph in the newspapers and called out 
editorial comment. One editor was so inade- 
quate to the situation as to entitle the article in 
which he described her triumph " The Equiv- 

121 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

alence of Woman." It was well-meant, but she 
was not at all pleased with it. 

She was now not merely an angler, but a 
" record " angler of the most virulent type. 
Wherever they went, she wanted, and she got, 
the pick of the water. She seemed to be equally 
at home on all kinds of streams, large and small. 
She would pursue the little mountain-brook 
trout in the early spring, and the Labrador 
salmon in July, and the huge speckled trout of 
the northern lakes in September, with the same 
avidity and resolution. All that she cared for 
was to get the best and the most of the fishing 
at each place where she angled. This she always 
did. 

And Beekman, — well, for him there were no 
more long separations from the partner of his 
life while he went off to fish some favourite 
stream. There were no more home-comings 
after a good day's sport to find her clad in cool 
and dainty raiment on the verandah, ready to 
welcome him with friendly badinage. There 
was not even any casting of the fly around 
Hardscrabble Point while she sat in the canoe 
reading a novel, looking up with mild and plea- 
sant interest when he caught a larger fish than 
usual, as an older and wiser person looks at a 
child playing some innocent game. Those days 
of a divided interest between man and wife were 

122 



A FATAL SUCCESS 

gone. She was now fully converted, and more. 
Beekman and Cornelia were one ; and she was 
the one. 

The last time I saw the De Peysters he was 
following her along the Beaverkill, carrying a 
landing-net and a basket, but no rod. She 
paused for a moment to exchange greetings, and 
then strode on down the stream. He lingered 
for a few minutes longer to light a pipe. 

" Well, old man," I said, "you certainly have 
succeeded in making an angler of Mrs. De Pey- 
ster." 

" Yes, indeed," he answered, — " haven't I? " 
Then he continued, after a few thoughtful puffs 
of smoke, " Do you know, I 'm not quite so sure 
as I used to be that fishing is the best of all 
sports. I sometimes think of giving it up and 
going in for croquet." 



123 



VII 
FISHING IN BOOKS 



u Simpson. — Have you ever seen any A merican books on angling , 
Fisher ? 

11 Fisher. — No. I do not think there are any published. Brother Jona- 
than is not yet sufficiently civilized to produce anything original on the 
gentle art. There is good trout-fishing i?i A merica, and the streams, 
which are all free, are much less fished than in our Island, 'from the 
small number of gentlemen,'' as an American writer says, ' who are at 
leisure to give their time to it."* " — William Andrew Chatto : The 
Angler's Souvenir (London, 1835). 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

That wise man and accomplished scholar, Sir 
Henry Wotton, the friend of Izaak Walton and 
ambassador of King James I. to the republic of 
Venice, was accustomed to say that " he would 
rather live five May months than forty De- 
cembers." The reason for this preference was 
no secret to those who knew him. It had no- 
thing to do with British or Venetian politics. 
It was simply because December, with all its 
domestic joys, is practically a dead month in 
the angler's calendar. 

His occupation is gone. The better sort of 
fish are out of season. The trout are lean and 
haggard : it is no trick to catch them and no 
treat to eat them. The salmon, all except the 
silly kelts, have run out to sea, and the place 
of their habitation no man knoweth. There is 
nothing for the angler to do but wait for the 
return of spring, and meanwhile encourage and 
sustain his patience with such small consolations 
in kind as a friendly Providence may put within 
his reach. 

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FISHING IN BOOKS 

Some solace may be found, on a day of crisp, 
wintry weather, in the childish diversion of 
catching pickerel through the ice. This method 
of taking fish is practised on a large scale and 
with elaborate machinery by men who supply 
the market. I speak not of their commercial 
enterprise and its gross equipage, but of ice- 
fishing in its more sportive and desultory form, 
as it is pursued by country boys and the incor- 
rigible village idler. 

You choose for this pastime a pond where 
the ice is not too thick, lest the labour of cutting 
through should be discouraging ; nor too thin, 
lest the chance of breaking in should be embar- 
rassing. You then chop out, with almost any 
kind of a hatchet or pick, a number of holes in 
the ice, making each one six or eight inches in 
diameter, and placing them about five or six feet 
apart. If you happen to know the course of a 
current flowing through the pond, or the loca- 
tion of a shoal frequented by minnows, you will 
do well to keep near it. Over each hole you 
set a small contrivance called a " tilt-up." It 
consists of two sticks fastened in the middle, at 
right angles to each other. The stronger of the 
two is laid across the opening in the ice. The 
other is thus balanced above the aperture, with 
a baited hook and line attached to one end, 
while the other end is adorned with a little flag. 

128 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

For choice, I would have the flags red. They 
look gayer, and I imagine they are more lucky. 

When you have thus baited and set your tilt- 
ups, — twenty or thirty of them, — you may 
put on your skates and amuse yourself by glid- 
ing to and fro on the smooth surface of the ice, 
cutting figures of eight and grapevines and dia- 
mond twists, while you wait for the pickerel to 
begin their part of the performance. They will 
let you know when they are ready. 

A fish, swimming around in the dim depths 
under the ice, sees one of your baits, fancies it, 
and takes it in. The moment he tries to run 
away with it, he tilts the little red flag into the 
air and waves it backward and forward. " Be 
quick ! " he signals all unconsciously ; " here I 
am ; come and pull me up ! " 

When two or three flags are fluttering at 
the same moment, far apart on the pond, you 
must skate with speed and haul in your lines 
promptly. 

How hard it is, sometimes, to decide which 
one you will take first ! That flag in the middle 
of the pond has been waving for at least a min- 
ute ; but the other, in the corner of the bay, is 
tilting up and down more violently : it must be 
a larger fish. Great Dagon ! there 's another 
red signal flying, away over by the point ! You 
hesitate, you make a few strokes in one direc- 

129 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

tion, then you whirl around and dart the other 
way. Meantime one of the tilt-ups, constructed 
with too short a cross-stick, has been pulled to 
one side, and disappears in the hole. One pick- 
erel in the pond carries a flag. Another tilt-up 
ceases to move and falls flat upon the ice. The 
bait has been stolen. You dash desperately 
towards the third flag and pull in the only fish 
that is left, — probably the smallest of them 
all! 

A surplus of opportunities does not insure 
the best luck. 

A room with seven doors — like the famous 
apartment in Washington's headquarters at 
Newburgh — is an invitation to bewilderment. 
I would rather see one fair opening in life than 
be confused by three dazzling chances. 

There was a good story about fishing through 
the ice which formed part of the stock-in-con- 
versation of that ingenious woodsman, Martin 
Moody, Esquire, of Big Tupper Lake. " ' T was 
a blame cold day," he said, " and the lines friz 
up stiffer 'n a fence-wire, jus' as fast as I pulled 
'em in, and my fingers got so dum' frosted I 
couldn't bait the hooks. But the fish was 
thicker and hungrier 'n flies in June. So I jus' 
took a piece of bait and held it over one o' the 
holes. Every time a fish jumped up to git it, 
I 'd kick him out on the ice. I tell ye, sir, I 

130 



FISHING IX BOOKS 

kicked out more 'n four hundred pounds of 
pick'rel that morning. Yaas, 'twas a big lot, 
I 'low, but then ? t was a cold day ! I jus' 
stacked 'em up solid, like cordwood." 

Let us now leave this frigid subject ! Iced 
fishing is but a chilling and unsatisfactory imi- 
tation of real sport. The angler will soon turn 
from it with satiety, and seek a better consola- 
tion for the winter of his discontent in the en- 
tertainment of fishing in books. 

Angling is the only sport that boasts the 
honour of having given a classic to literature. 

Izaak Walton's success with The Compleat 
Angler was a fine illustration of fisherman's 
luck. He set out, in partnership with a pastry- 
cook named Thomas Barker, to produce a little 
"discourse of fish and fishing" which should 
serve as a useful manual for quiet persons in- 
clined to follow the contemplative man's recre- 
ation. He came home with a book which has 
made his name beloved by ten generations of 
gentle readers, and given him a secure place in 
the Pantheon of letters, — not a haughty emi- 
nence, but a modest niche, all his own, and ever 
adorned with grateful offerings of fresh flowers. 

This was great luck. But it was well-de- 
served, and therefore it has not been grudged 
or envied. 

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FISHING IN BOOKS 

Walton was a man so peaceful and contented, 
so friendly in his disposition, and so innocent in 
all his goings, that only two other writers, so far 
as I know, have ever spoken ill of him. 

One was that sour-complexioned Cromwellian 
trooper, Eichard Franck, who wrote in 1658 an 
envious book entitled Northern 3femoirs, calcu- 
lated for the Meridian of Scotland, c&c, to 
which is added The Contemplative and Practi- 
cal Angler. In this book the furious Franck 
first pays Walton the flattery of imitation, and 
then further adorns him with abuse, calling The 
Compleat Angler " an indigested octavo, stuffed 
with morals from Dubravius and others," and 
more than hinting that the father of anglers 
knew little or nothing of " his uncultivated art." 
Walton was a Churchman and a Loyalist, you 
see, while Franck was a Commonwealth man 
and an Independent. 

The other detractor of Walton was Lord 
Byron, who wrote 

" The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet 
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." 

But Byron is certainly a poor authority on the 
quality of mercy. His contempt need not cause 
an honest man overwhelming distress. I should 
call it a complimentary dislike. 

Walton was a great quoter. His book is not 
M stuffed," as Franck jealously alleged, but it 

132 




"Walton was a man so peaceful and contented." 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

is certainly well sauced with piquant references 
to other writers, as early as the author of the 
Book of Job, and as late as John Dennys, who 
betrayed to the world The Secrets of Angling 
in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book 
with fragments of information about fish and 
fishing, more or less apocryphal, gathered from 
iElian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis Bacon, 
Dubravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned 
Aldrovandus, the venerable Bede, the divine Du 
Bartas, and many others. He borrowed freely 
for the adornment of his discourse, and did not 
scorn to make use of what may be called live 
quotations, — that is to say, the unpublished 
remarks of his near contemporaries, caught in 
friendly conversation, or handed down by oral 
tradition. 

But these various seasonings did not disguise, 
they only enhanced, the delicate flavour of the 
dish which he served up to his readers. This 
was all of his own taking, and of a sweetness 
quite incomparable. 

I like a writer who is original enough to water 
his garden with quotations, without fear of being 
drowned out. Such men are Charles Lamb and 
James Russell Lowell and John Burroughs. 

Walton's book is as fresh as a handful of 
wild violets and sweet lavender. It breathes 
the odours of the green fields and the woods. 

133 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

It tastes of simple, homely, appetizing things 
like the " syllabub of new verjuice in a new- 
made haycock" which the milkwoman promised 
to give Piscator the next time he came that 
way. Its music plays the tune of A Contented 
Heart over and over again without dulness, and 
charms us into harmony with 

" A noise like the sound of a hidden brook 
In the leafy month of June, 
That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune." 

Walton has been quoted even more than any 
of the writers whom he quotes. It would be 
difficult, even if it were not ungrateful, to write 
about angling without referring to him. Some 
pretty saying, some wise reflection from his 
pages, suggests itself at almost every turn of the 
subject. 

And yet his book, though it be the best, is 
not the only readable one that his favourite re- 
creation has begotten. The literature of angling 
is extensive, as any one may see who will look 
at the list of the collection presented by Mr. 
John Bartlett to Harvard University, or study 
the catalogue of the piscatorial library of Mr. 
Dean Sage, of Albany, who himself has contrib- 
uted an admirable book on The Ristigouche. 

Nor is this literature altogether composed of 
dry and technical treatises, interesting only to 

134 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

the confirmed anglimaniac, or to the young nov- 
ice ardent in pursuit of practical information. 
There is a good deal of juicy reading in it. 

Books about angling should be divided (ac- 
cording to De Quincey's method) into two 
classes, — the literature of knowledge, and the 
literature of power. 

The first class contains the handbooks on 
rods and tackle, the directions bow to angle for 
different kinds of fish, and the guides to various 
fishing-resorts. The weakness of these books is 
that they soon fall out of date, as the manufac- 
ture of tackle is improved, the art of angling 
refined, and the fish in once-famous waters are 
educated or exterminated. 

Alas, how transient is the fashion of this 
world, even in angling ! The old manuals with 
their precise instruction for trimming and 
painting trout-rods eighteen feet long, and their 
painful description of " oyntments " made of 
nettle-juice, fish-hawk oil, camphor, cat's fat, or 
assafoedita, (supposed to allure the fish,) are 
altogether behind the age. Many of the flies 
described by Charles Cotton and Thomas Bar- 
ker seem to have gone out of style among the 
trout. Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. 
Generation after generation of fish have seen 
these same old feathered confections floating on 

135 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

the water, and learned by sharp experience that 
they do not taste good. The blase trout demand 
something new, something modern. It is for 
this reason, I suppose, that an altogether origi- 
nal fly, unheard of, startling, will often do great 
execution in an over-fished pool. 

Certain it is that the art of angling, in settled 
regions, is growing more dainty and difficult. 
You must cast a longer, lighter line ; you must 
use finer leaders ; you must have your flies 
dressed on smaller hooks. 

And another thing is certain : in many places 
(described in the ancient volumes) where fish 
were once abundant, they are now like the ship- 
wrecked sailors in Vergil his iEneid, — 

4 ' rari nantes in gurgite vasto." 

The floods themselves are also disappearing. 
Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman was telling me, 
the other day, of the trout-brook that used to 
run through the Connecticut village when he 
nourished a poet's youth. He went back to 
visit the stream a few years since, and it was 
gone, literally vanished from the face of earth, 
stolen to make a water-supply for the town, and 
used for such base purposes as the washing of 
clothes and the sprinkling of streets. 

I remember an expedition with my father, 
some twenty years ago, to Nova Scotia, whither 

136 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

we set out to realize the hopes kindled by an 
Angler's Guide written in the early sixties. 
It was like looking for tall clocks in the farm- 
houses around Boston. The harvest had been 
well gleaned before our arrival, and in the very 
place where our visionary author located his 
most famous catch we found a summer hotel and 
a sawmill. 

'T is strange and sad, how many regions there 
are where " the fishing was wonderful forty 
years ago " ! 

The second class of angling books — the lit- 
erature of power — includes all (even those 
written with some purpose of instruction) in 
which the gentle fascinations of the sport, the 
attractions of living out-of-doors, the beauties of 
stream and woodland, the recollections of happy 
adventure, and the cheerful thoughts that make 
the best of a day's luck, come clearly before the 
author's mind and find some fit expression in his 
words. Of such books, thank Heaven, there is 
a plenty to bring a Maytide charm and cheer 
into the fisherman's dull December. I will 
name, by way of random tribute from a grateful 
but unmethodical memory, a few of these conso- 
latory volumes. 

First of all comes a family of books that were 
born in Scotland and smell of the heather. 

137 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

Whatever a Scotchman's conscience permits 
him to do, is likely to be done with vigour and a 
fiery mind. In trade and in theology, in fishing 
and in fighting, he is all there and thoroughly 
kindled. 

There is an old-fashioned book called The 
Moo?' and the Loch, by John Colquhoun, which 
is full of contagious enthusiasm. Thomas 
Tod Stoddart was a most impassioned angler, 
(though over-given to strong language,) and in 
his Angling Reminiscences he has touched the 
subject with a happy hand, — happiest when 
he breaks into poetry and tosses out a song for 
the fisherman. Professor John Wilson of the 
University of Edinburgh held the chair of 
Moral Philosophy in that institution, but his 
true fame rests on his well-earned titles of A. M. 
and F. E. S., — Master of Angling, and Fish- 
erman Royal of Scotland. His Recreations 
of Christopher North, albeit their humour is 
sometimes too boisterously hammered in, are 
genial and generous essays, overflowing with pas- 
sages of good-fellowship and pedestrian fancy. 
I would recommend any person in a dry and 
melancholy state of mind to read his paper on 
" Streams," in the first volume of Essays Crit- 
ical and Imaginative. But it must be said, by 
way of warning to those with whom dryness is 
a matter of principle, that all Scotch fishing- 

138 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

books are likely to be sprinkled with Highland 
Dew. 

Among English anglers, Sir Humphry Davy 
is one of whom Christopher North speaks rather 
slightingly. Nevertheless his Salmonia is well 
worth reading, not only because it was written 
by a learned man, but because it exhales the 
spirit of cheerful piety and vital wisdom. 
Charles Kingsley was another great man who 
wrote well about angling. His Chalk-Stream 
Studies are clear and sparkling. They cleanse 
the mind and refresh the heart and put us more 
in love with living. Of quite a different style 
are the Maxims and Hints for an Angler, 
and Miseries of Fishing, which were written 
by Richard Penn, a grandson of the founder of 
Pennsylvania. This is a curious and rare little 
volume, professing to be a compilation from the 
" Common Place Book of the Houghton Fishing 
Club," and dealing with the subject from a Pick- 
wickian point of view. I suppose that William 
Penn would have thought his grandson a frivo- 
lous writer. 

But he could not have entertained such an 
opinion of the Honourable Robert Boyle, of 
whose Occasional Reflections no less than twelve 
discourses treat " of Angling Improved to Spirit- 
ual Uses." The titles of some of these discourses 
are quaint enough to quote. " Upon the being 

139 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

called upon to rise early on a very fair morning." 
" Upon the mounting, singing, and lighting of 
larks." "Upon fishing with a counterfeit fly." 
" Upon a danger arising from an unseasonable 
contest with the steersman." " Upon one's drink- 
ing water out of the brim of his hat." With 
such good texts it is easy to endure, and easier 
still to spare, the sermons. 

Englishmen carry their love of travel into their 
anglimania, and many of their books describe 
fishing adventures in foreign parts. Rambles 
with a Fishing-Rod, by E. S. Roscoe, tells of 
happy days in the Salzkammergut and the Ba- 
varian Highlands and Normandy. Fish-Tails 
and a Few Others, by Bradnock Hall, con- 
tains some delightful chapters on Norway. The 
Rod in India, by H. S. Thomas, narrates won- 
derful adventures with the Mahseer and the 
Eohu and other pagan fish. 

But, after all, I like the English angler best 
when he travels at home, and writes of dry-fly 
fishing in the Itchen or the Test, or of wet-fly 
fishing in Northumberland, as Sir Edward Grey 
has lately done in his charming contribution to 
The Haddon Hall Library. There is a fas- 
cinating booklet that appeared quietly, some 
fifteen years ago, called An Amateur Angler's 
Days in Dove Dale. It runs as easily and 
merrily and kindly as a little river, full of peace 

140 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

and pure enjoyment. Other books of the same 
quality have since been written by the same 
pen, — Days in Clover, Fresh Woods, By 
Meadow and Stream. It is no secret, I believe, 
that the author is Mr. Edward Marston, the 
senior member of a London publishing-house. 
But he still clings to his retiring pen-name of 
" The Amateur Angler," and represents him- 
self, by a graceful fiction, as all unskilled in the 
art. An instance of similar modesty is found 
in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the first chap- 
ter of his delightful Angling Sketches (without 
which no fisherman's library is complete), " Con- 
fessions of a Duffer." This an engaging liberty 
which no one else would dare to take. 

The best English fish-story pure and simple, 
that I know, is " Crocker's Hole," by R. D. 
Blackmore, the creator of Lorna Doone. 

Let us turn now to American books about 
angling. Of these the merciful dispensations of 
Providence have brought forth no small store 
since Mr. William Andrew Chatto made the 
ill-natured remark which is pilloried at the head 
of this chapter. By the way, it seems that 
Mr. Chatto had never heard of " The Schuylkill 
Fishing Company," which was founded on that 
romantic stream near Philadelphia in 1732, nor 
seen the Authentic Historical Memoir of that 
celebrated and amusing society. 

141 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

I am sorry for the man who cannot find 
pleasure in reading the appendix of The Amer- 
ican Angler's Book, by Thaddeus Norris ; or 
the discursive pages of Frank Forester's Fish 
and Fishing ; or the introduction and notes of 
that unexcelled edition of Walton which was 
made by the Reverend Doctor George W. 
Bethune ; or Superior Fishing and Game Fish 
of the North, by Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt ; or 
Henshall's Booh of the Black Bass ; or the 
admirable digressions of Mr. Henry P. Wells, 
in his Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle, and The 
American Salmon Angler. Dr. William C. 
Prime has never put his profound knowledge of 
the art of angling into a manual of technical 
instruction ; but he has written of the delights 
of the sport in Owl Creek Letters, and in I 
Go A-Fishing, and in some of the chapters of 
Along New England Roads and Among New 
England Hills, with a persuasive skill that 
has created many new anglers, and made many 
old ones grateful. It is a fitting coincidence of 
heredity that his niece, Mrs. Annie Trumbull 
Slosson, is the author of the most tender and 
pathetic of all angling stories, Fishin Jimmy. 

But it is not only in books written altogether 
from his peculiar point of view and to humour 
his harmless insanity, that the angler may find 

142 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

pleasant reading about his favourite pastime. 
There are excellent bits of fishing scattered all 
through the field of good literature. It seems 
as if almost all the men who could write well 
had a friendly feeling for the contemplative 
sport. 

Plutarch, in The Lives of the Noble Gre- 
cians and Romans, tells a capital fish-story of 
the manner in which the Egyptian Cleopatra 
fooled that far-famed Roman wight, Marc An- 
tony, when they were angling together on the 
Nile. As I recall it, from a perusal in early 
boyhood, Antony was having very bad luck in- 
deed ; in fact he had taken nothing, and was 
sadly put out about it. Cleopatra, thinking to 
get a rise out of him, secretly told one of her 
attendants to dive over the opposite side of the 
barge and fasten a salt fish to the Roman gen- 
eral's hook. The attendant was much pleased 
with this commission, and, having executed it, 
proceeded to add a fine stroke of his own ; for 
when he had made the fish fast on the hook, he 
gave a great pull to the line and held on tightly. 
Antony was much excited and began to haul 
violently at his tackle. 

" By Jupiter ! " he exclaimed, " it was long 
in coming, but I have a colossal bite now." 

" Have a care," said Cleopatra, laughing be- 
hind her sunshade, " or he will drag you into 

143 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

the water. You must give him line when he 
pulls hard." 

" Not a denarius will I give ! ' rudely re- 
sponded Antony. "I mean to have this hali- 
but or Hades ! " 

At this moment the man under the boat, being 
out of breath, let the line go, and Antony, fall- 
ing backward, drew up the salted herring. 

" Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus," he 
proudly said. " It is not as large as I thought, 
but it looks like the oldest one that has been 
caught to-day." 

Such, in effect, is the tale narrated by the 
veracious Plutarch. And if any careful critic 
wishes to verify my quotation from memory, he 
may compare it with the proper page of Lang- 
horne's translation ; I think it is in the second 
volume, near the end. 

Sir Walter Scott, who once described himself 
as 

" No fisher, 
But a well-wisher 
To the game," 

has an amusing passage of angling in the third 
chapter of Redgauntlet. Darsie Latimer is re- 
lating his adventures in Dumfriesshire. " By 
the way," says he, " old Cotton's instructions, by 
which I hoped to qualify myself for the gentle 
society of anglers, are not worth a farthing for 

144 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

this meridian. I learned this by mere accident, 
after I had waited four mortal hours. I shall 
never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, 
about twelve years old, without either brogue 
or bonnet, barelegged, with a very indifferent 
pair of breeches, — how the villain grinned in 
scorn at my landing-net, my plummet, and the 
gorgeous jury of flies which I had assembled to 
destroy all the fish in the river. I was induced 
at last to lend the rod to the sneering scoundrel, 
to see what he would make of it ; and he not 
only half -filled my basket in an hour, but liter- 
ally taught me to kill two trouts with my own 
hand." 

Thus ancient and well-authenticated is the 
superstition of the angling powers of the bare- 
footed country-boy, — in fiction. 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in that valuable 
but over-capitalized book, My Novell makes use 
of Fishing for Allegorical Purposes. The epi- 
sode of John Burley and the One-eyed Perch 
not only points a Moral but adorns the Tale. 

In the works of R. D. Blackmore, angling 
plays a less instructive but a pleasanter part. 
It is closely interwoven with love. There is a 
magical description of trout-fishing on a mea- 
dow-brook in Alice Lorraine. And who that 
has read Lorna Doone, (pity for the man or 
woman that knows not the delight of that 

145 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

book !) can ever forget how young John Ridd 
dared his way up the gliddery water-slide, after 
loaches, and found Lorna in a fair green mea- 
dow, adorned with flowers, at the top of the 
brook ? 

I made a little journey into the Doone Coun- 
try once, just to see that brook and to fish in it. 
The stream looked smaller, and the water-slide 
less terrible, than they seemed in the book. 
But it was a mighty pretty place after all ; and 
I suppose that even John Ridd, when he came 
back to it in after years, found it shrunken a 
little. 

All the streams were larger in our boyhood 
than they are now, except, perhaps, that which 
flows from the sweetest spring of all, the foun- 
tain of love, which John Eidd discovered be- 
side the Bag worthy River, — and I, on the wil- 
low-shaded banks of the Patapsco, where the 
Baltimore girls fish for gudgeons, — and you? 
Come, gentle reader, is there no stream whose 
name is musical to you, because of a hidden 
spring of love that you once found on its shore ? 
The waters of that fountain never fail, and in 
them alone we taste the undiminished fulness of 
immortal youth. 

The stories of William Black are enlivened 
with fish, and he knew, better than most men, 
how they should be taken. Whenever he wanted 

146 




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FISHING IN BOOKS 

to get two young people engaged to each other, 
all other* devices failing, he sent them out to 
angle together. If it had not been for fishing, 
everything in A Princess of Thule and White 
Heather would have gone wrong. 

But even men who have been disappointed in 
love may angle for solace or diversion. I have 
known some old bachelors who fished excel- 
lently well ; and others I have known who could 
find, and give, much pleasure in a day on the 
stream, though they had no skill in the sport. 
Of this class was Washington Irving, with an 
extract from whose Sketch Booh I will bring 
this rambling dissertation to an end. 

" Our first essay," says he, " was along a 
mountain brook among the highlands of the 
Hudson ; a most unfortunate place for the execu- 
tion of those piscatory tactics which had been in- 
vented along the velvet margins of quiet English 
rivulets. It was one of those wild streams that 
lavish, among our romantic solitudes, unheeded 
beauties enough to fill the sketch-book of a 
hunter of the picturesque. Sometimes it would 
leap down rocky shelves, making small cascades, 
over which the trees threw their broad balan- 
cing sprays, and long nameless weeds hung in 
fringes from the impending banks, dripping 
with diamond drops. Sometimes it would brawl 
and fret along a ravine in the matted shade of 

147 



FISHING IN BOOKS 

a forest, filling it with murmurs ; and, after this 
termagant career, would steal forth into open 
day, with the most placid, demure face imagin- 
able ; as I have seen some pestilent shrew of a 
housewife, after filling her home with uproar 
and ill-humour, come dimpling out of doors, 
swimming and courtesying, and smiling upon 
all the world. 

"How smoothly would this vagrant brook 
glide, at such times, through some bosom of 
green meadow-land among the mountains, where 
the quiet was only interrupted by the occasional 
tinkling of a bell from the lazy cattle among 
the clover, or the sound of a woodcutter's axe 
from the neighbouring forest ! 

" For my part, I was always a bungler at all 
kinds of sport that required either patience or 
adroitness, and had not angled above half an 
hour before I had completely ' satisfied the sen- 
timent,' and convinced myself of the truth of 
Izaak Walton's opinion, that angling is some- 
thing like poetry, — a man must be born to it. 
I hooked myself instead of the fish ; tangled my 
line in every tree ; lost my bait ; broke my rod ; 
until I gave up the attempt in despair, and 
passed the day under the trees, reading old 
Izaak, satisfied that it was his fascinating vein 
of honest simplicity and rural feeling that had 
bewitched me, and not the passion for angling." 

148 



VIII 
A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 



u The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but 
that which bears the finest roses. 1 " 1 — Solomon Singlewitz : The Life 
of Adam. 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 



It was not all unadulterated sweetness, of 
course. There were enough difficulties in the 
way to make it seem desirable ; and a few stings 
of annoyance, now and then, lent piquancy to 
the adventure. But a good memory, in dealing 
with the past, has the art of straining out all 
the beeswax of discomfort, and storing up little 
jars of pure hydromel. As we look back at our 
six weeks in Norway, we agree that no period 
of our partnership in experimental honeymoon- 
ing has yielded more honey to the same amount 
of comb. 

Several considerations led us to the resolve 
of taking our honeymoon experimentally rather 
than chronologically. We started from the self- 
evident proposition that it ought to be the hap- 
piest time in married life. 

"It is perfectly ridiculous," said my lady 
Graygown, " to suppose that a thing like that 
can be fixed by the calendar. It may possibly 
fall in the first month after the wedding, but it 

151 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

is not likely. Just think how slightly two peo- 
ple know each other when they get married. 
They are in love, of course, but that is not at all 
the same as being well acquainted. Sometimes 
the more love, the less acquaintance ! And 
sometimes the more acquaintance, the less love ! 
Besides, at first there are always the notes of 
thanks for the wedding-presents to be written, 
and the letters of congratulation to be answered, 
and it is awfully hard to make each one sound 
a little different from the others and perfectly 
natural. Then, you know, everybody seems to 
suspect you of the folly of being newly married. 
You run across your friends everywhere, and 
they grin when they see you. You can't help 
feeling as if a lot of people were watching you 
through opera-glasses, or taking snap-shots at 
you with a kodak. It is absurd to imagine that 
the first month must be the real honeymoon. 
And just suppose it were, — what bad luck that 
would be ! What would there be to look for- 
ward to ? " 

Every word that fell from her lips seemed to 
me like the wisdom of Diotima. 

" You are right," I cried ; " Portia could not 
hold a candle to you for clear argument. Be- 
sides, suppose two people are imprudent enough 
to get married in the first week of December, 
as we did ! — what becomes of the chronological 

152 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

honeymoon then? There is no fishing in De- 
cember, and all the rivers of Paradise, at least 
in our latitude, are frozen up. No, my lady, 
we will discover our month of honey by the em- 
pirical method. Each year we will set out to- 
gether to seek it in a solitude for two ; and we 
will compare notes on moons, and strike the 
final balance when we are sure that our happi- 
est experiment has been completed." 

We are not sure of that, even yet. We are 
still engaged, as a committee of two, in our phi- 
losophical investigation, and we decline to make 
anything but a report of progress. We know 
more now than we did when we first went honey- 
mooning in the city of Washington. For one 
thing, we are certain that not even the far- 
famed rosemary-fields of Narbonne, or the fra- 
grant hillsides of the Corbieres, yield a sweeter 
harvest to the busy-ness of the bees than the 
Norwegian meadows and mountain-slopes yielded 
to our idleness in the summer of 1888. 

n 

The rural landscape of Norway, on the long 
easterly slope that leads up to the watershed 
among the mountains of the western coast, is 
not unlike that of Vermont or New Hampshire. 
The railway from Christiania to the Eandsf jord 
carried us through a hilly country of scattered 

153 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

farms and villages. Wood played a prominent 
part in the scenery. There were dark stretches 
of forest on the hilltops and in the valleys ; riv- 
ers filled with floating logs ; sawmills beside the 
waterfalls ; wooden farmhouses painted white ; 
and rail-fences around the fields. The people 
seemed sturdy, prosperous, independent. They 
had the familiar habit of coming down to the 
station to see the train arrive and depart. We 
might have fancied ourselves on a journey 
through the Connecticut valley, if it had not 
been for the soft sing-song of the Norwegian 
speech and the uniform politeness of the railway 
officials. 

What a room that was in the inn at Kands- 
f jord where we spent our first night out ! Vast, 
bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit the 
persistent nocturnal twilight ; a sea-like floor of 
blue-painted boards, unbroken by a single island 
of carpet ; and a castellated stove in one corner : 
an apartment for giants, with two little beds 
for dwarfs on opposite shores of the ocean. 
There was no telephone ; so we arranged a sys- 
tem of communication with a fishing-line, to 
make sure that the sleepy partner should be 
awake in time for the early boat in the morn- 
ing. 

The journey up the lake took seven hours, 
and reminded us of a voyage on Lake George ; 

154 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

placid, picturesque, and pervaded by summer 
boarders. Somewhere on the way we had lunch, 
and were well fortified to take the road when 
the steamboat landed us at Odnaes, at the head 
of the lake, about two o'clock in the afternoon. 

There are several methods in which you may 
drive through Norway. The government main- 
tains posting-stations at the farms along the 
main travelled highways, where you can hire 
horses and carriages of various kinds. There 
are also English tourist agencies which make a 
business of providing travellers with complete 
transportation. You may try either of these 
methods alone, or you may make a judicious 
mixture. 

Thus, by an application of the theory of per- 
mutations and combinations, you have your 
choice among four ways of accomplishing a 
driving-tour. First, you may engage a carriage 
and pair, with a driver, from one of the tourist 
agencies, and roll through your journey in sed- 
entary ease, provided your horses do not go 
lame or give out. Second, you may rely alto- 
gether upon the posting-stations to send you on 
your journey ; and this is a very pleasant, lively 
way, provided there is not a crowd of travellers 
on the road before you, who take up all the 
comfortable conveyances and leave you nothing 
but a jolting cart or a ramshackle kariol of 

155 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

the time of St. Olaf. Third, you may rent an 
easy-riding vehicle (by choice a well-hung gig) 
for the entire trip, and change ponies at the 
stations as you drive along ; this is the safest 
way. The fourth method is to hire your horse- 
flesh at the beginning for the whole journey, and 
pick up your vehicles from place to place. This 
method is theoretically possible, but I do not 
know any one who has tried it. 

Our gig was waiting for us at Odnaes. There 
was a brisk little mouse-coloured pony in the 
shafts ; and it took but a moment to strap our 
leather portmanteau on the board at the back, 
perch the postboy on top of it, and set out for 
our first experience of a Norwegian driving- 
tour. 

The road at first was level and easy ; and we 
bowled along smoothly through the valley of the 
Etnaelv, among drooping birch-trees and green 
fields where the larks were singing. At Tom- 
levolden, ten miles farther on, we reached the 
first station, a comfortable old farmhouse, with 
a great array of wooden outbuildings. Here we 
had a chance to try our luck with the Norwegian 
language in demanding " en hest, saa straxt som 
muligt. This was what the guide-book told us 
to say when we wanted a horse. 

There is great fun in making a random cast 
on the surface of a strange language. You can- 

156 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

not tell what will come up. It is like an experi- 
ment in witchcraft. We should not have been 
at all surprised, I must confess, if our prelim- 
inary incantation had brought forth a cow or a 
basket of eggs. 

But the good people seemed to divine our in- 
tentions ; and while we were waiting for one of 
the stable-boys to catch and harness the new 
horse, a yellow-haired maiden inquired, in very 
fair English, if we would not be pleased to have 
a cup of tea and some butter-bread ; which we 
did with great comfort. 

The Skydsgut, or so-called postboy, for the 
next stage of the journey, was a full-grown man 
of considerable weight. As he climbed to his 
perch on our portmanteau, my lady Graygown 
congratulated me on the prudence which had 
provided that one side of that receptacle should 
be of an inflexible stiffness, quite incapable of 
being crushed ; otherwise, asked she, what would 
have become of her Sunday frock under the 
pressure of this stern necessity of a postboy ? 

But I think we should not have cared very 
much if all our luggage had been smashed on 
this journey, for the road now began to ascend, 
and the views over the Etnadal, with its wind- 
ing river, were of a breadth and sweetness most 
consoling. Up and up we went, curving in and 
out through the forest, crossing wild ravines 

157 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

and shadowy dells, looking back at every turn 
on the wide landscape bathed in golden light. 
At the station of Sveen, where we changed horse 
and postboy again, it was already evening. The 
sun was down, but the mystical radiance of the 
northern twilight illumined the sky. The dark 
fir-woods spread around us, and their odour- 
ous breath was diffused through the cool, still 
air. We were crossing the level summit of the 
plateau, twenty-three hundred feet above the 
sea. Two tiny woodland lakes gleamed out 
among the trees. Then the road began to slope 
gently towards the west, and emerged suddenly 
on the edge of the forest, looking out over the 
long, lovely vale of Valders, with snow-touched 
mountains on the horizon, and the river Baegna 
shimmering along its bed, a thousand feet be- 
low us. 

What a heart-enlarging outlook ! What a 
keen joy of motion, as the wheels rolled down the 
long incline, and the sure-footed pony swung 
between the shafts and rattled his hoofs merrily 
on the hard road ! What long, deep breaths of 
silent pleasure in the crisp night air! What 
wondrous mingling of lights in the afterglow 
of sunset, and the primrose bloom of the first 
stars, and faint foregleamings of the rising moon 
creeping over the hill behind us ! What per- 
fection of companionship without words, as we 

158 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

rode together through a strange land, along the 
edge of the dark ! 

When we finished the thirty-fifth mile, and 
drew up in the courtyard of the station at Fry- 
denlund, Graygown sprang out, with a little 
sigh of regret. 

" Is it last night," she cried, " or to-morrow 
morning ? I have n't the least idea what time 
it is ; it seems as if we had been travelling in 
eternity." 

" It is just ten o'clock," I answered, " and the 
landlord says there will be a hot supper of trout 
ready for us in five minutes." 

It would be vain to attempt to give a daily 
record of the whole journey in which we made 
this fair beginning. It was a most idle and un- 
systematic pilgrimage. We wandered up and 
down, and turned aside when fancy beckoned. 
Sometimes we hurried on as fast as the horses 
would carry us, driving sixty or seventy miles a 
day ; sometimes we loitered and dawdled, as if 
we did not care whether we got anywhere or 
not. If a place pleased us, we stayed and tried 
the fishing. If we were tired of driving, we 
took to the water, and travelled by steamer along 
a fjord, or hired a rowboat to cross from point 
to point. One day we would be in a good little 
hotel, with polyglot guests, and serving-maids in 
stagey Norse costumes, — like the famous inn at 

159 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

Stalheim, which commands the amazing pano- 
rama of the Naerodal. Another day we would 
lodge in a plain farmhouse like the station at 
Nedre Vasenden, where eggs and fish were the 
staples of diet, and the farmer's daughter wore 
the picturesque peasants' dress, with its tall cap, 
without any dramatic airs. Lakes and rivers, 
precipices and gorges, waterfalls and glaciers 
and snowy mountains were our daily repast. 
We drove over five hundred miles in various 
kinds of open wagons, hariols for one, and stol- 
Jcjaerres for two, after we had left our com- 
fortable gig behind us. We saw the ancient 
dragon-gabled church of Burgund ; and the de- 
lightful, showery town of Bergen ; and the 
gloomy cliffs of the Geiranger-Fjord laced with 
filmy cataracts; and the bewitched crags of 
the Eomsdal ; and the wide, desolate landscape 
of Jerkin ; and a hundred other unforgotten 
scenes. Somehow or other we went, (around 
and about, and up and down, now on wheels, 
and now on foot, and now in a boat,) all the 
way from Christiania to Throndhjem. My lady 
Graygown could give you the exact itinerary, 
for she has been well brought up, and always 
keeps a diary. All I know is, that we set out 
from one city and arrived at the other, and 
we gathered by the way a collection of instanta- 
neous photographs. I am going to turn them 

160 




z 






CO 

be 



T3 

H 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

over now, and pick out a few of the clearest 
pictures. 

in 

Here is the bridge over the Naeselv at Fa- 
gernaes. Just below it is a good pool for trout, 
but the river is broad and deep and swift. It 
is difficult wading to get out within reach of 
the fish. I have taken half a dozen small ones 
and come to the end of my cast. There is a 
big one lying out in the middle of the river, I 
am sure. But the water already rises to my 
hips ; another step will bring it over the top of 
my waders, and send me downstream feet up- 
permost. 

" Take care ! " cries Gray gown from the grassy 
bank, where she sits placidly crocheting some 
mysterious fabric of white yarn. 

She does not see the large rock lying at the 
bottom of the river just beyond me. If I can 
step on that, and stand there without being 
swept away, I can reach the mid-current with 
my flies. It is a long stride and a slippery 
foothold, but by good luck " the last step which 
costs" is accomplished. The tiny black and 
orange hackle goes curling out over the stream, 
lights softly, and swings around with the cur- 
rent, folding and expanding its feathers as if it 
were alive. The big trout takes it promptly the 

161 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

instant it passes over him ; and I play him 
and net him without moving from my perilous 
perch. 

Graygown waves her crochet- work like a flag, 
" Bravo ! " she cries. " That 's a beauty, nearly 
two pounds ! But do be careful about coming 
back ; you are not good enough to take any 
risks yet." 

The station at Skogstad is a solitary farm- 
house lying far up on the bare hillside, with its 
barns and out-buildings grouped around a cen- 
tral courtyard, like a rude fortress. The river 
travels along the valley below, now wrestling its 
way through a narrow passage among the rocks, 
now spreading out at leisure in a green meadow. 
As we cross the bridge, the crystal water is 
changed to opal by the sunset glow, and a gen- 
tle breeze ruffles the long pools, and the trout 
are rising freely. It is the perfect hour for fish- 
ing. Would Graygown dare to drive on alone 
to the gate of the fortress, and blow upon the 
long horn which doubtless hangs beside it, and 
demand admittance and a lodging, " in the 
name of the great Jehovah and the Continental 
Congress," — while I angle down the river a 
mile or so ? 

Certainly she would. What door is there in 
Europe at which the American girl is afraid to 

162 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

knock? "But wait a moment. How do you 
ask for fried chicken and pancakes in Nor- 
wegian ? Kylling og JPandekage f How fierce 
it sounds ! All right now. Eun along and 
fish." 

The river welcomes me like an old friend. 
The tune that it sings is the same that the 
flowing water repeats all around the world. 
Not otherwise do the lively rapids carry the 
familiar air, and the larger falls drone out a 
burly bass, along the west branch of the Penob- 
scot, or down the valley of the Bouquet. But 
here there are no forests to conceal the course 
of the stream. It lies as free to the view as a 
child's thought. As I follow on from pool to 
pool, picking out a good trout here and there, 
now from a rocky corner edged with foam, now 
from a swift gravelly run, now from a snug 
hiding-place that the current has hollowed out 
beneath the bank, all the way I can see the 
fortress far above me on the hillside. 

I am as sure that it has already surrendered 
to Graygown as if I could discern her white 
banner of crochet-work floating from the battle- 
ments. 

Just before dark, I climb the hill with a 
heavy basket of fish. The castle gate is open. 
The scent of chicken and pancakes salutes the 
weary pilgrim. In a cosy little parlour, adorned 

163 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

with fluffy mats and pictures framed in pine- 
cones, lit by a hanging lamp with glass pend- 
ants, sits the mistress of the occasion, calmly 
triumphant and plying her crochet-needle. 

There is something mysterious about a wo- 
man's fancy-work. It seems to have all the 
soothing charm of the tobacco-plant, without 
its inconveniences. Just to see her tranquil- 
lity, while she relaxes her mind and busies her 
fingers with a bit of tatting or embroidery or 
crochet, gives me a sense of being domesticated, 
a " homey " feeling, anywhere in the wide world. 

If you ever go to Norway, you must be sure 
to see the Loenvand. You can set out from the 
comfortable hotel at Faleide, go up the Indvik 
Fjord in a rowboat, cross over a two-mile hill 
on foot or by carriage, spend a happy day on 
the lake, and return to your inn in time for a 
late supper. The lake is perhaps the most beau- 
tiful in Norway. Long and narrow, it lies like 
a priceless emerald of palest green, hidden and 
guarded by jealous mountains. It is fed by 
huge glaciers, which hang over the shoulders of 
the hills like ragged cloaks of ice. 

As we row along the shore, trolling in vain 
for the trout that live in the ice-cold water, 
fragments of the tattered cloth-of-silver far 
above us, on the opposite side, are loosened by 

164 




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O 

I 






T3 

oo 

b£ 
O 

CO 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

the touch of the summer sun, and fall from the 
precipice. They drift downward, at first, as 
noiselessly as thistledowns ; then they strike the 
rocks and come crashing towards the lake with 
the hollow roar of an avalanche. 

At the head of the lake we find ourselves in 
an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Gla- 
ciers are peering down upon us. Snow-fields 
glare at us with glistening eyes. Black crags 
seem to bend above us with an eternal frown. 
Streamers of foam float from the forehead of 
the hills and the lips of the dark ravines. But 
there is a little river of cold, pure water flowing 
from one of the rivers of ice, and a pleasant 
shelter of young trees and bushes growing 
among the debris of shattered rocks ; and there 
we build our camp-fire and eat our lunch. 

Hunger is a most impudent appetite. It 
makes a man forget all the proprieties. What 
place is there so lofty, so awful, that he will not 
dare to sit down in it and partake of food? 
Even on the side of Mount Sinai, the elders of 
Israel spread their out-of-door table, " and did 
eat and drink." 

I see the Tarn of the Elk at this moment, 
just as it looked in the clear sunlight of that 
August afternoon, ten years ago. Far down in 
a hollow of the desolate hills it nestles, four 

165 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

thousand feet above the sea. The moorland 
trail hangs high above it, and, though it is a 
mile away, every curve of the treeless shore, 
every shoal and reef in the light green water 
is clearly visible. With a powerful field-glass 
one can almost see the large trout for which the 
pond is famous. 

The shelter-hut on the bank is built of rough 
gray stones, and the roof is leaky to the light 
as well as to the weather. But there are two 
beds in it, one for my guide and one for me ; 
and a practicable fireplace, which is soon filled 
with a blaze of comfort. There is also a random 
library of novels, which former fishermen have 
thoughtfully left behind them. I like strong 
reading in the wilderness. Give me a story 
with plenty of danger and wholesome fighting in 
it, — "The Three Musketeers," or "Treasure 
Island," or " The Afghan's Knife." Intricate 
studies of social dilemmas and tales of mild 
philandering seem bloodless and insipid. 

The trout in the Tarn of the Elk are large, 
undoubtedly, but they are also few in number 
and shy in disposition. Either some of the 
peasants have been fishing over them with the 
deadly " otter," or else they belong to that va- 
riety of the trout family known as Trutta 
damnosa, — the species which you can see but 
cannot take. We watched these aggravating 

166 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

fish playing on the surface at sunset ; we saw 
them dart beneath our boat in the early morn- 
ing ; but not until a driving snowstorm set in, 
about noon of the second day, did we succeed 
in persuading any of them to take the fly. 
Then they rose, for a couple of hours, with ami- 
able perversity. I caught five, weighing be- 
tween two and four pounds each, and stopped 
because my hands were so numb that I could 
cast no longer. 

Now for a long tramp over the hills and home. 
Yes, home ; for yonder in the white house at 
Drivstuen, with fuchsias and geraniums bloom- 
ing in the windows, and a pretty, friendly Norse 
girl to keep her company, my lady is waiting for 
me. See, she comes running out to the door, 
in the gathering dusk, with a red flower in her 
hair, and hails me with the fisherman's greeting, 
What luck ? 

Well, this luck, at all events ! I can show 
you a few good fish, and sit down with you to 
a supper of reindeer- venison and a quiet even- 
ing of music and talk. 

Shall I forget thee, hospitable Stuefloten, 
dearest to our memory of all the rustic stations 
in Norway ? There are no stars beside thy 
name in the pages of Baedeker. But in the 
book of our hearts a whole constellation is thine. 

167 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

The long, low, white farmhouse stands on a 
given hill at the head of the Romsdal. A 
flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on 
the stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with 
a big bell to call the labourers home from the 
fields. In the corner of the living-room of the 
old house there is a broad fireplace built across 
the angle. Curious cupboards are tucked away 
everywhere. The long table in the dining-room 
groans thrice a day with generous fare. There 
are as many kinds of hot bread as in a Virginia 
country-house; the cream is thick enough to 
make a spoon stand up in amazement ; once, at 
dinner, we sat embarrassed before six different 
varieties of pudding. 

In the evening, when the saffron light is be- 
ginning to fade, we go out and walk in the road 
before the house, looking down the long mys- 
tical vale of the Eauma, or up to the purple 
western hills from which the clear streams of 
the Ulvaa flow to meet us. 

Above Stuefloten the Eauma lingers and 
meanders through a smoother and more open 
valley, with broad beds of gravel and flowery 
meadows. Here the trout and grayling grow 
fat and lusty, and here we angle for them, day 
after day, in water so crystalline that when one 
steps into the stream one hardly knows whether 
to expect a depth of six inches or six feet. 

168 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

Tiny English flies and leaders of gossamer 
are the tackle for such water in midsummer. 
With this delicate outfit, and with a light hand 
and a long line, one may easily outfish the native 
angler, and fill a twelve-pound basket every fair 
day. I remember an old Norwegian, an invet- 
erate fisherman, whose footmarks we saw ahead 
of us on the stream all though an afternoon. 
Footmarks I call them ; and so they were, liter- 
ally, for there were only the prints of a single 
foot to be seen on the banks of sand, and be- 
tween them, a series of small, round, deep holes. 

"What kind of a bird is that, Frederik?" 
I asked my faithful guide. 

" That is old Pedersen," he said, " with his 
wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. 
We shall catch him in a little while." 

Sure enough, about six o'clock we saw him 
standing on a grassy point, hurling his line, 
with a fat worm on the end of it, far across 
the stream, and letting it drift down with the 
current. But the water was too fine for that 
style of fishing, and the poor old fellow had but 
a half dozen little fish. My creel was already 
overflowing, so I emptied out all of the grayling 
into his bag, and went on up the river to com- 
plete my tale of trout before dark. 

And when the fishing is over, there is Gray- 
gown with the wagon, waiting at the appointed 

169 



A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

place under the trees, beside the road. The 
sturdy white pony trots gayly homeward. The 
pale yellow stars blossom out above the hills 
again, as they did on that first night when we 
were driving down into the Valders. Frederik 
leans over the back of the seat, telling us mar- 
vellous tales, in his broken English, of the fish- 
ing in a certain lake among the mountains, and 
of the reindeer-shooting on the f jeld beyond it. 

" It is sad that you go to-morrow," says he ; 
" but you come back another year, I think, to 
fish in that lake, and to shoot those reindeer." 

Yes, Frederik, we are coming back to Nor- 
way some day, perhaps, — who can tell? It is 
one of the hundred places that we are vaguely 
planning to revisit. For, though we did not see 
the midnight sun there, we saw the honeymoon 
most distinctly. And it was bright enough to 
take pictures. 



170 



IX 
WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 



My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately tJie sun- 
shine and the summer, the flowers and tJie azure sky , shall become , as it 
were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their 
beatity and enjoy their glory" — Richard Jefferies : TJie Life of 
the Fields. 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

It was the little lad that asked the question ; 
and the answer also, as you will see, was mainly 
his. 

We had been keeping Sunday afternoon to- 
gether in our favourite fashion, following out 
that pleasant text which tells us to " behold the 
fowls of the air." There is no injunction of 
Holy Writ less burdensome in acceptance, or 
more profitable in obedience, than this easy out- 
of-doors commandment. For several hours we 
walked in the way of this precept, through the 
untangled woods that lie behind the Forest Hills 
Lodge, where a pair of pigeon-hawks had their 
nest ; and around the brambly shores of the 
small pond, where Maryland yellow-throats and 
song-sparrows were settled ; and under the lofty 
hemlocks of the fragment of forest across the 
road, where rare warblers flitted silently among 
the tree-tops. The light beneath the evergreens 
was growing dim as we came out from their 
shadow into the widespread glow of the sunset, 
on the edge of a grassy hill, overlooking the 

173 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

long valley of the Gale River, and uplooking to 
the Franconia Mountains. 

It was the benediction hour. The placid air 
of the day shed a new tranquillity over the con- 
soling landscape. The heart of the earth seemed 
to taste a repose more perfect than that of com- 
mon days. A hermit-thrush, far up the vale, 
sang his vesper hymn ; while the swallows, seek- 
ing their evening meal, circled above the river- 
fields without an effort, twittering softly, now 
and then, as if they must give thanks. Slight 
and indefinable touches in the scene, perhaps 
the mere absence of the tiny human figures pass- 
ing along the road or labouring in the distant 
meadows, perhaps the blue curls of smoke rising 
lazily from the farmhouse chimneys, or the fam- 
ily groups sitting under the maple-trees before 
the door, diffused a sabbath atmosphere over the 
world. 

Then said the lad, lying on the grass beside 
me, " Father, who owns the mountains ? " 

I happened to have heard, the day before, of 
two or three lumber companies that had bought 
some of the woodland slopes ; so I told him their 
names, adding that there were probably a good 
many different owners, whose claims taken all 
together would cover the whole Franconia range 
of hills. 

" Well," answered the lad, after a moment 

174 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

of silence, " I don't see what difference that 
makes. Everybody can look at them." 

They lay stretched out before us in the level 
sunlight, the sharp peaks outlined against the 
sky, the vast ridges of forest sinking smoothly 
towards the valleys, the deep hollows gathering 
purple shadows in their bosoms, and the little 
foothills standing out in rounded promontories 
of brighter green from the darker mass behind 
them. 

Far to the east, the long comb of Twin Moun- 
tain extended itself back into the untrodden 
wilderness. Mount Garfield lifted a clear-cut 
pyramid through the translucent air. The huge 
bulk of Lafayette ascended majestically in front 
of us, crowned with a rosy diadem of rocks. 
Eagle Cliff and Bald Mountain stretched their 
line of scalloped peaks across the entrance to the 
Notch. Beyond that shadowy vale, the swelling 
summits of Cannon Mountain rolled away to 
meet the tumbling waves of Kinsman, domi- 
nated by one loftier crested billow that seemed 
almost ready to curl and break out of green si- 
lence into snowy foam. Ear down the sleeping 
Landaff valley the undulating dome of Moosi- 
lauke trembled in the distant blue. 

They were all ours, from crested cliff to 
wooded base. The solemn groves of firs and 
spruces, the plumed sierras of lofty pines, the 

175 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS ? 

stately pillared forests of birch and beech, the 
wild ravines, the tremulous thickets of silvery- 
poplar, the bare peaks with their wide outlooks, 
and the cool vales resounding with the ceaseless 
song of little rivers, — we knew and loved them 
all ; they ministered peace and joy to us ; they 
were all ours, though we held no title deeds and 
our ownership had never been recorded. 

What is property, after all ? The law says 
there are two kinds, real and personal. But it 
seems to me that the only real property is that 
which is truly personal, that which we take into 
our inner life and make our own forever, by 
understanding and admiration and sympathy 
and love. This is the only kind of possession 
that is worth anything. 

A gallery of great paintings adorns the house 
of the Honourable Midas Bond, and every year 
adds a new treasure to his collection. He knows 
how much they cost him, and he keeps the run 
of the quotations at the auction sales, congratu- 
lating himself as the price of the works of his 
well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and the 
value of his art treasures is enhanced. But why 
should he call them his ? He is only their custo- 
dian. He keeps them well varnished, and framed 
in gilt. But he never passes through those gilded 
frames into the world of beauty that lies behind 
the painted canvas. He knows nothing of those 

176 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

lovely places from which the artist's soul and 
hand have drawn their inspiration. They are 
closed and barred to him. He has bought the 
pictures, but he cannot buy the key. The poor 
art student who wanders through his gallery, 
lingering with awe and love before the mas- 
terpieces, owns them far more truly than Midas 
does. 

Pomposus Silverman purchased a rich library 
a few years ago. The books were rare and costly. 
That was the reason why Pomposus bought them. 
He was proud to feel that he was the possessor 
of literary treasures which were not to be found 
in the houses of his wealthiest acquaintances. 
But the threadbare Bucherfreund, who was en- 
gaged at a slender salary to catalogue the library 
and take care of it, became the real proprietor. 
Pomposus paid for the books, but Bucherfreund 
enjoyed them. 

I do not mean to say that the possession of 
much money is always a barrier to real wealth 
of mind and heart. Nor would I maintain that 
all the poor of this world are rich in faith and 
heirs of the kingdom. But some of them are. 
And if some of the rich of this world (through 
the grace of Him with whom all things are pos- 
sible) are also modest in their tastes, and gentle 
in their hearts, and open in their minds, and 
ready to be pleased with unbought pleasures, 

177 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

they simply share in the best things which are 
provided for all. 

I speak not now of the strife that men wage 
over the definition and the laws of property. 
Doubtless there is much here that needs to be 
set right. There are men and women in the 
world who are shut out from the right to earn a 
living, so poor that they must perish for want 
of daily bread, so full of misery that there is no 
room for the tiniest seed of joy in their lives. 
This is the lingering shame of civilization. 
Some day, perhaps, we shall find the way to 
banish it. Some day, every man shall have his 
title to a share in the world's great work and 
the world's large joy. 

But meantime it is certain that, where there 
are a hundred poor bodies who suffer from phy- 
sical privation, there are a thousand poor souls 
who suffer from spiritual poverty. To relieve 
this greater suffering there needs no change of 
laws, only a change of heart. 

What does it profit a man to be the landed 
proprietor of countless acres unless he can reap 
the harvest of delight that blooms from every 
rood of God's earth for the seeing eye and the 
loving spirit ? And who can reap that harvest 
so closely that there shall not be abundant 
gleaning left for all mankind ? The most that 
a wide principality can yield to its legal owner 

178 



WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

is a living. But the real owner can gather from 
a field of goldenrod, shining in the August sun- 
light ? an unearned increment of delight. 

We measure success by accumulation. The 
measure is false. The true measure is apprecia- 
tion. He who loves most has most. 

How foolishly we train ourselves for the work 
of life ! We give our most arduous and eager 
efforts to the cultivation of those faculties which 
will serve us in the competitions of the forum 
and the market-place. But if we were wise, we 
should care infinitely more for the unfolding of 
those inward, secret, spiritual powers by which 
alone we can become the owners of anything 
that is worth having. Surely God is the great 
proprietor. Yet all His works He has given 
away. He holds no title-deeds. The one thing 
that is His, is the perfect understanding, the per- 
fect joy, the perfect love, of all things that He 
has made. To a share in this high ownership 
He welcomes all who are poor in spirit. This 
is the earth which the meek inherit. This is 
the patrimony of the saints in light. 

" Come, laddie," I said to my comrade, " let 
us go home. You and I are very rich. We own 
the mountains. But we can never sell them, and 
we don't want to." 



179 



X 
A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 



M Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be 
sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. A nd it is not 
by any means certain thai a mail's business is the most important 
thing he has to do." — Robert Louis Stevenson: An Apology for 
Idlers. 






A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 



A CASUAL INTRODUCTION 

On the South Shore of Long Island, all things 
incline to a natural somnolence. There are no 
ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs, no hasty 
torrents, no bustling waterfalls in that land, 

"In which it seemeth always afternoon." 

The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun ; the 
farms and market-gardens yield a placid harvest 
to a race of singularly unhurried tillers of the 
soil ; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not 
caring to get too high in the world, only far 
enough to catch a pleasant glimpse of the sea 
and a breath of fresh air ; the very trees grow 
leisurely, as if they felt that they had " all the 
time there is." And from this dreamy land, 
close as it lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult 
of the breakers and the foam of ever-turning 
tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the 
Great South Bay and a long range of dunes, 

183 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes, and wild- 
roses. 

In such a country you could not expect a lit- 
tle brook to be noisy, fussy, energetic. If it 
were not lazy, it would be out of keeping. 

But the actual and undisguised idleness of 
this particular brook was another affair, and 
one in which it was distinguished among its fel- 
lows. For almost all the other little rivers of 
the South Shore, lazy as they may be by nature, 
yet manage to do some kind of work before they 
finish the journey from their crystal-clear springs 
into the brackish waters of the bay. They turn 
the wheels of sleepy gristmills, while the miller 
sits with his hands in his pockets underneath 
the willow-trees. They fill reservoirs out of 
which great steam-engines pump the water to 
quench the thirst of Brooklyn. Even the 
smaller streams tarry long enough in their sea- 
ward sauntering to irrigate a few cranberry- 
bogs and so provide that savoury sauce which 
makes the Long Island turkey a fitter subject 
for Thanksgiving. 

But this brook of which I speak did none of 
these useful things. It was absolutely out of 
business. There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, 
nor a cranberry-bog, on all its course of a short 
mile. The only profitable affair it ever under- 
took was to fill a small ice-pond near its en- 

184 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

trance into the Great South Bay. You could 
hardly call this a very energetic enterprise. It 
amounted to little more than a good-natured 
consent to allow itself to be used by the winter 
for the making of ice, if the winter happened 
to be cold enough. Even this passive industry 
came to nothing ; for the water, being separated 
from the bay only by a short tideway under a 
wooden bridge on the south country road, was 
too brackish to freeze easily ; and the ice, being 
pervaded with weeds, was not much relished by 
the public. So the wooden ice-house, innocent 
of paint, and toned by the weather to a soft, 
sad-coloured gray, stood like an improvised ruin 
among the pine-trees beside the pond. 

It was through this unharvested ice-pond, this 
fallow field of water, that my lady Graygown 
and I entered on acquaintance with our lazy, 
idle brook. We had a house, that summer, a 
few miles down the bay. But it was a very 
small house, and the room that we liked best 
was out of doors. So we spent much time in a 
sailboat, — by name " The Patience," — mak- 
ing voyages of exploration into watery corners 
and byways. Sailing past the wooden bridge 
one day, when a strong east wind had made a 
very low tide, we observed the water flowing out 
beneath the road with an eddying current. We 
were interested to discover where such a stream 

185 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

came from. But the sailboat could not go under 
the bridge, nor even make a landing on the 
shore without risk of getting aground. The 
next day we came back in a rowboat to follow 
the clue of curiosity. The tide was high now, 
and we passed with the reversed current under 
the bridge, almost bumping our heads against the 
timbers. Emerging upon the pond, we rowed 
across its shallow, weed-encumbered waters, and 
were introduced without ceremony to one of the 
most agreeable brooks that we had ever met. 

It was quite broad where it came into the 
pond, — a hundred feet from side to side, — bor- 
dered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow 
grasses. The real channel meandered in sweep- 
ing curves from bank to bank, and the water, 
except in the swifter current, was filled with an 
amazing quantity of some aquatic moss. The 
woods came straggling down on either shore. 
There were fallen trees in the stream here and 
there. On one of the points an old swamp- 
maple, with its decrepit branches and its leaves 
already touched with the hectic colours of decay, 
hung far out over the water which was under- 
mining it, looking and leaning downward, like 
an aged man who bends, half-sadly and half- 
willingly, towards the grave. 

But for the most part the brook lay wide 
open to the sky, and the tide, rising and sinking 

186 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

somewhat irregularly in the pond below, made 
curious alternations in its depth and in the swift- 
ness of its current. For about half a mile we 
navigated this lazy little river, and then we 
found that rowing would carry us no farther, 
for we came to a place where the stream issued 
with a livelier flood from an archway in a 
thicket. 

This woodland portal was not more than four 
feet wide, and the branches of the small trees 
were closely interwoven overhead. We shipped 
the oars and took one of them for a paddle. 
Stooping down, we pushed the boat through 
the archway and found ourselves in the Fairy 
Dell. It was a long, narrow bower, perhaps four 
hundred feet from end to end, with the brook 
dancing through it in a joyous, musical flow over 
a bed of clean yellow sand and white pebbles. 
There were deep places in the curves where you 
could hardly touch bottom with an oar, and 
shallow places in the straight runs where the 
boat would barely float. Not a ray of unbroken, 
sunlight leaked through the green roof of this 
winding corridor ; and all along the sides there 
were delicate mosses and tall ferns and wild- 
wood flowers that love the shade. 

At the upper end of the bower our progress 
in the boat was barred by a low bridge, on a 
forgotten road that wound through the pine- 

187 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

woods. Here I left my lady Graygown, seated 
on the shady corner of the bridge with a book, 
swinging her feet over the stream, while I set 
out to explore its further course. Above the 
wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor 
easy-going estuaries. The water came down 
through the most complicated piece of under- 
brush that I have ever encountered. Alders 
and swamp maples and pussy-willows and gray 
birches grew together in a wild confusion. 
Blackberry bushes and fox-grapes and cat-briers 
trailed and twisted themselves in an incredible 
tangle. There was only one way to advance, 
and that was to wade in the middle of the 
brook, stooping low, lifting up the pendulous 
alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, now 
under and now over the innumerable obstacles, 
as a darning-needle is pushed in and out through 
the yarn of a woollen stocking. 

It was dark and lonely in that difficult pas- 
sage. The brook divided into many channels, 
turning this way and that way, as if it were 
lost in the woods. There were huge clumps of 
Osmunda regalis spreading their fronds in 
tropical profusion. Mouldering logs were cov- 
ered with moss. The water gurgled slowly into 
deep corners under the banks. Catbirds and 
blue jays fluttered screaming from the thickets. 
Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away, showing the 

188 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

white flag of fear. Once I thought I saw the 
fuscous gleam of a red fox stealing silently- 
through the brush. It would have been no sur- 
prise to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see the 
eyes of a wildcat gleaming through the leaves. 

For more than an hour I was pushing my 
way through this miniature wilderness of half 
a mile ; and then I emerged suddenly, to find 
myself face to face with — a railroad embank- 
ment and the afternoon express, with its par- 
lour-cars, thundering down to Southampton ! 

It was a strange and startling contrast. The 
explorer's joy, the sense of adventure, the feeling 
of wildness and freedom, withered and crumpled 
somewhat preposterously at the sight of the 
parlour-cars. My scratched hands and wet boots 
and torn coat seemed unkempt and disreputa- 
ble. Perhaps some of the well-dressed people 
looking out at the windows of the train were 
the friends with whom we were to dine on Sat- 
urday. JBatechef What would they say to 
such a costume as mine? What did I care 
what they said ! 

But, all the same, it was a shock, a disen- 
chantment, to find that civilization, with all its 
absurdities and conventionalities, was so threat- 
eningly close to my new-found wilderness. My 
first enthusiasm was not a little chilled as I 
walked back, along an open woodland path, to 

189 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

the bridge where Graygown was placidly read- 
ing. Reading, I say, though her book was 
closed, and her brown eyes were wandering over 
the green leaves of the thicket, and the white 
clouds drifting, drifting lazily across the blue 
deep of the sky. 

II 

A BETTER ACQUAINTANCE 

On the voyage home, she gently talked me out 
of my disappointment, and into a wiser frame 
of mind. 

It was a surprise, of course, she admitted, to 
find that our wilderness was so little, and to 
discover the trail of a parlour-car on the edge 
of Paradise. But why not turn the surprise 
around, and make it pleasant instead of disa- 
greeable ? Why not look at the contrast from 
the side that we liked best ? 

It was not necessary that everybody should 
take the same view of life that pleased us. The 
world would not get on very well without people 
who preferred parlour-cars to canoes, and patent- 
leather shoes to India-rubber boots, and ten- 
course dinners to picnics in the woods. These 
good people were unconsciously toiling at the 
hard and necessary work of life in order that 
we, of the chosen and fortunate few, should 

190 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

be at liberty to enjoy the best things in the 
world. 

Why should we neglect our opportunities, 
which were also our real duties ? The nervous 
disease of civilization might prevail all around 
us, but that ought not to destroy our grateful 
enjoyment of the lucid intervals that were 
granted to us by a merciful Providence. 

Why should we not take this little untamed 
brook, running its humble course through the 
borders of civilized life and midway between 
two flourishing summer resorts, — a brook with- 
out a single house or a cultivated field on its 
banks, as free and beautiful and secluded as if 
it flowed through miles of trackless forest, — 
why not take this brook as a sign that the 
ordering of the universe had a "good inten- 
tion " even for inveterate idlers, and that the 
great Arranger of the world felt some kindness 
for such gipsy - hearts as ours ? What law, 
human or divine, was there to prevent us from 
making this stream our symbol of deliverance 
from the conventional and commonplace, our 
guide to liberty and a quiet mind ? 

So reasoned Graygown with her 

" most silver flow 
Of subtle-pac^d counsel in distress. " 

And, according to her word, so did we. That 
lazy, idle brook became to us one of the best of 

191 



A LAZY, IDLE BBOOK 

friends; the pathfinder of happiness on many 
a bright summer day ; and, through long vaca- 
tions, the faithful encourager of indolence. 

Indolence in the proper sense of the word, 
you understand. The meaning which is com- 
monly given to it, as Archbishop Trench pointed 
out in his suggestive book about Words and 
Their Uses, is altogether false. To speak of 
indolence as if it were a vice is just a great 
big verbal slander. 

Indolence is a virtue. It comes from two 
Latin words, which mean freedom from anxiety 
or grief. And that is a wholesome state of mind. 
There are times and seasons when it is even a 
pious and blessed state of mind. Not to be in 
a hurry ; not to be ambitious or jealous or re- 
sentful ; not to feel envious of anybody ; not to 
fret about to-day nor worry about tomorrow, — 
that is the way we ought all to feel at some time 
in our lives ; and that is the kind of indolence 
in which our brook faithfully encouraged us. 

'T is an age in which such encouragement is 
greatly needed. We have fallen so much into 
the habit of being always busy that we know 
not how nor when to break it off with firmness. 
Our business tags after us into the midst of our 
pleasures, and we are ill at ease beyond reach of 
the telegraph and the daily newspaper. We 
agitate ourselves amazingly about a multitude 

192 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

of affairs, — the politics of Europe, the state of 
the weather all around the globe, the marriages 
and festivities of very rich people, and the latest 
novelties in crime, none of which are of vital in- 
terest to us. The more earnest souls among us 
are cultivating a vicious tendency to Summer 
Schools, and Seaside Institutes of Philosophy, 
and Mountaintop Seminaries of Modern Lan- 
guages. 

We toil assiduously to cram something more 
into those scrap -bags of knowledge which we 
fondly call our minds. Seldom do we rest tran- 
quil long enough to find out whether there is 
anything in them already that is of real value, 
— any native feeling, any original thought, 
which would like to come out and sun itself for 
a while in quiet. 

For my part, I am sure that I stand more in 
need of a deeper sense of contentment with life 
than of a knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue, 
and that all the paradoxes of Hegel would not 
do me so much good as one hour of vital sym- 
pathy with the careless play of children. The 
Marquis du Paty de FHuitre may espouse the 
daughter and heiress of the Honourable James 
Bulger with all imaginable pomp, if he will. 
Ca ne m? intrigue point du tout. I would rather 
stretch myself out on the grass and watch yon- 
der pair of kingbirds carrying luscious flies to 

193 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

their young ones in the nest, or chasing away 
the marauding crow with shrill cries of anger. 

What a pretty battle it is, and in a good 
cause, too ! Waste no pity on that big black 
ruffian. He is a villain and a thief, an eofp- 
stealer, an ogre, a devourer of unfledged inno- 
cents. The kingbirds are not afraid of him, 
knowing that he is a coward at heart. They fly 
upon him, now from below, now from above. 
They buffet him from one side and from the 
other. They circle round him like a pair of 
swift gunboats round an antiquated man-of-war. 
They even perch upon his back and dash their 
beaks into his neck and pluck feathers from his 
piratical plumage. At last his lumbering flight 
has carried him far enough away, and the brave 
little defenders fly back to the nest, poising 
above it on quivering wings for a moment, then 
dipping down swiftly in pursuit of some passing 
insect. The war is over. Courage has had its 
turn. Now tenderness comes into play. The 
young birds, all ignorant of the passing danger, 
but always conscious of an insatiable hunger, 
are uttering loud remonstrances and plaintive 
demands for food. Domestic life begins again, 
and they that sow not, neither gather into barns, 
are fed. 

Do you suppose that this wondrous stage of 

194 



A LAZY, IDLE BllOOK 



earth was set, and all the myriad actors on it 
taught to play their parts, without a spectator 
in view ? Do you think that there is any thing- 
better for you and me to do, now and then, 
than to sit down quietly in a humble seat, and 
watch a few scenes in the drama ? Has it not 
something to say to us, and do we not under- 
stand it best when we have a peaceful heart and 
free from dolor ? That is what in-dolence means, 
and there are no better teachers of it than the 
light-hearted birds and untoiling flowers, com- 
mended by the wisest of all masters to our con- 
sideration ; nor can we find a more pleasant ped- 
agogue to lead us to their school than a small, 
merry brook. 

And this was what our chosen stream did 
for us. It was always luring us away from an 
artificial life into restful companionship with 
nature. 

Suppose, for example, we found ourselves 
growing a bit dissatisfied with the domestic 
arrangements of our little cottage, and coveting 
the splendours of a grander establishment. An 
afternoon on the brook was a good cure for that 
folly. Or suppose a day came when there was an 
imminent prospect of many formal calls. We 
had an important engagement up the brook ; 
and while we kept it we could think with satis- 
faction of the joy of our callers when they dis- 

195 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

covered that they could discharge their whole 
duty with a piece of pasteboard. This was an 
altruistic pleasure. Or suppose that a few 
friends were coming to supper, and there were 
no flowers for the supper-table. We could easily 
have bought them in the village. But it was far 
more to our liking to take the children up the 
brook, and come back with great bunches of 
wild white honeysuckle and blue flag, or posies 
of arrowheads and cardinal-flowers. Or sup- 
pose that I was very unwisely and reluctantly 
labouring at some serious piece of literary work, 
promised for the next number of The Scribbler's 
Review ; and suppose that in the midst of this 
labour the sad news came to me that the fisher- 
man had forgotten to leave any fish at our cot- 
tage that morning. Should my innocent babes 
and my devoted wife be left to perish of starva- 
tion while I continued my poetical comparison 
of the two Williams, Shakspeare and Watson ? 
Inhuman selfishness ! Of course it was my plain 
duty to sacrifice my inclinations, and get my 
fly-rod, and row away across the bay, with a de- 
ceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch a 
basket of trout in 



196 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 
III 

THE SECRETS OF INTIMACY 

There ! I came within eight letters of telling 
the name of the brook, a thing that I am firmly 
resolved not to do. If it were an ordinary fish- 
less little river, or even a stream with nothing 
better than grass-pike and sunfish in it, you 
should have the name and welcome. But when 
a brook contains speckled trout, and when their 
presence is known to a very few persons who 
guard the secret as the dragon guarded the 
golden apples of the Hesperides, and when the 
size of the trout is large beyond the dreams of 
hope, — well, when did you know a true angler 
who would willingly give away the name of 
such a brook as that ? You may find an encour- 
ager of indolence in almost any stream of the 
South Side, and I wish you joy of your brook. 
But if you want to catch trout in mine you must 
discover it for yourself, or perhaps go with me 
some day, and solemnly swear secrecy. 

That was the way in which the freedom of 
the stream was conferred upon me. There was 
a small boy in the village, the son of rich but 
respectable parents, and an inveterate all-round 
sportsman, aged fourteen years, with whom I 
had formed a close intimacy. I was telling him 

197 * 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

about the pleasure of exploring the idle brook, 
and expressing the opinion that in bygone 
days, (in that mythical "forty years ago" when 
all fishing was good), there must have been trout 
in it. A certain look came over the boy's face. 
He gazed at me solemnly, as if he were search- 
ing the inmost depths of my character before he 
spoke. 

" Say, do you want to know something ? " 

I assured him that an increase of knowledge 
was the chief aim of my life. 

" Do you promise you won't tell ? " 

I expressed my readiness to be bound to si- 
lence by the most awful pledge that the law 
would sanction. 

" Wish you may die ? " 

I not only wished that I might die, but was 
perfectly certain that I would die. 

" Well, what 's the matter with catching trout 
in that brook now ? Do you want to go with 
me next Saturday ? I saw four or five bully 
ones last week, and got three." 

On the appointed day, we made the voyage, 
landed at the upper bridge, walked around by 
the woodpath to the railroad embankment, and 
began to worm our way down through the tan- 
gled wilderness. Fly-fishing, of course, was out 
of the question. The only possible method of 
angling was to let the line, baited with a juicy 

198 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

" garden hackle," drift down the current as far 
as possible before you, under the alder-branches 
and the cat-briers, into the holes and corners of 
the stream. Then, if there came a gentle tug 
on the rod, you must strike, to one side or the 
other, as the branches might allow, and trust 
wholly to luck for a chance to play the fish. 
Many a trout we lost that day, — the largest ones, 
of course, — and many a hook was embedded 
in a sunken log, or hopelessly entwined among 
the boughs overhead. But when we came out 
at the bridge, very wet and disheveled, we had 
seven pretty fish, the heaviest about half a pound. 
The Fairy Dell yielded a brace of smaller ones, 
and altogether we were reasonably happy as we 
took up the oars and pushed out upon the open 
stream. 

But if there were fish above, why should there 
not be fish below ? It was about sunset, the an- 
gler's golden hour. We were already committed 
to the crime of being late for supper. It would 
add little to our guilt and much to our pleasure 
to drift slowly down the middle of the brook 
and cast the artful fly in the deeper corners on 
either shore. So I took off the vulgar bait- 
hook and put on a delicate leader with a Queen 
of the Water for a tail-fly and a Yellow Sally 
for a dropper, — innocent little confections of 
feathers and tinsel, dressed on the tinest hooks, 

199 



A LAZY, IDLE BBOOK 

and calculated to tempt the appetite or the curi- 
osity of the most capricious trout. 

For a long time the whipping of the water 
produced no result, and it seemed as if the 
dainty style of angling were destined to prove 
less profitable than plain fishing with a worm. 
But presently we came to an elbow of the brook, 
just above the estuary, where there was quite a 
stretch of clear water along the lower side, with 
two half -sunken logs sticking out from the bank, 
against which the current had drifted a broad 
raft of weeds. I made a long cast, and sent the 
tail-fly close to the edge of the weeds. There 
was a swelling ripple on the surface of the 
water, and a noble fish darted from under the 
logs, dashed at the fly, missed it, and whirled 
back to his shelter. 

" Gee ! " said the boy, " that was a whacker ! 
He made a wake like a steamboat." 

It was a moment for serious thought. What 
was best to be done with that fish ? Leave him 
to settle down for the night and come back after 
him another day ? Or try another cast for him 
at once ? A fish on Saturday evening is worth 
two on Monday morning. I changed the Queen 
of the Water for a Royal Coachman tied on a 
number fourteen hook, — white wings, peacock 
body with a belt of crimson silk, — and sent it 
out again, a foot farther up the stream and a 

200 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

shade closer to the weeds. As it settled on the 
water, there was a flash of gold from the shadow 
beneath the logs, and a quick turn of the wrist 
made the tiny hook fast in the fish. He fought 
wildly to get back to the shelter of his logs, but 
the four ounce rod had spring enough in it to 
hold him firmly away from that dangerous re- 
treat. Then he splurged up and down the open 
water, and made fierce dashes among the grassy 
shallows, and seemed about to escape a dozen 
times. But at last his force was played out ; he 
came slowly towards the boat, turning on his 
side, and I netted him in my hat. 

" Bully for us ; " said the boy, " we got him ! 
What a dandy ! " 

It was indeed one of the handsomest fish that 
I have ever taken on the South Side, — just 
short of two pounds and a quarter, — small 
head, broad tail, and well-rounded sides coloured 
with orange and blue and gold and red. A pair 
of the same kind, one weighing two pounds and 
the other a pound and three quarters, were taken 
by careful fishing down the lower end of the 
pool, and then we rowed home through the dusk, 
pleasantly convinced that there is no virtue more 
certainly rewarded than the patience of anglers, 
and entirely willing to put up with a cold supper 
and a mild reproof for the sake of sport. 

Of course we could not resist the temptation 

201 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

to show those fish to the neighbours. But, 
equally of course, we evaded the request to give 
precise information as to the precise place where 
they were caught. Indeed, I fear that there 
must have been something confused in our de- 
scription of where we had been on that after- 
noon. Our carefully selected language may have 
been open to misunderstanding. At all events, 
the next day, which was the Sabbath, there was 
a row of eager but unprincipled anglers sitting 
on a bridge over another stream, and fishing for 
trout with worms and large expectations, but 
without visible results. 

The boy and I agreed that if this did not teach 
a good moral lesson it was not our fault. 

I obtained the boy's consent to admit the part- 
ner of my life's joys and two of our children to 
the secret of the brook, and thereafter, when we 
visited it, we took the fly-rod with us. If by 
chance another boat passed us in the estuary, we 
were never fishing, but only gathering flowers, or 
going for a picnic, or taking photographs. But 
when the uninitiated ones had passed by, we 
would get out the rod again, and try a few more 
casts. 

One day in particular I remember, when 
Graygown and little Teddy were my companions. 
We really had no hopes of angling, for the hour 
was mid-noon, and the day was warm and still. 

202 



A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

But suddenly the trout, by one of those unac- 
countable freaks which make their disposition 
so interesting and attractive, began to rise all 
about us in a bend of the stream. 

" Look ! " said Teddy ; " wherever you see one 
of those big smiles on the water, I believe there 's 
a fish ! " 

Fortunately the rod was at hand. Gray gown 
and Teddy managed the boat and the landing- 
net with consummate skill. We landed no less 
than a dozen beautiful fish at that most unlikely 
hour and then solemnly shook hands all around. 

There is a peculiar pleasure in doing a thing 
like this, catching trout in a place where nobody 
thinks of looking for them, and at an hour when 
everybody believes they cannot be caught. It 
is more fun to take one good fish out of an old, 
fished-out stream, near at hand to the village, 
than to fill a basket from some far-famed and 
well-stocked water. It is the unexpected touch 
that tickles our sense of pleasure. While life 
lasts, we are always hoping for it and expecting 
it. There is no country so civilized, no exist- 
ence so humdrum, that there is not room enough 
in it somewhere for a lazy, idle brook, an en- 
courager of indolence, with hope of happy sur- 
prises. 



203 



XI 

THE OPEN FIRE 



It is a vulgar notion that afire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, 
however, to look at. And it is never twice the same." — Charles 
Dudley Warner : Backlog Studies. 



THE OPEN FIRE 

I 

LIGHTING UP 

Man is the animal that has made friends with 
the fire. 

All the other creatures, in their natural state, 
are afraid of it. They look upon it with wonder 
and dismay. It fascinates them, sometimes, 
with its glittering eyes in the night. The squir- 
rels and the hares come pattering softly to- 
wards it through the underbrush around the 
new camp. The deer stands staring into the 
blaze of the jack while the hunter's canoe creeps 
through the lily-pads. But the charm that mas- 
ters them is one of dread, not of love. It is the 
witchcraft of the serpent's lambent look. When 
they know what it means, when the heat of the 
fire touches them, or even when its smell comes 
clearly to their most delicate sense, they recog- 
nize it as their enemy, the Wild Huntsman 
whose red hounds can follow, follow for days 
without wearying, growing stronger and more 
furious with every turn of the chase. Let but 

207 



THE OPEN FIRE 

a trail of smoke drift down the wind across the 
forest, and all the game for miles and miles will 
catch the signal for fear and flight. 

Many of the animals have learned how to 
make houses for themselves. The cabane of 
the beaver is a wonder of neatness and comfort, 
much preferable to the wigwam of his Indian 
hunter. The muskrat knows how thick and 
high to build the dome of his waterside cottage, 
in order to protect himself against the frost of 
the coming winter and the floods of the follow- 
ing spring. The woodchuck's house has two or 
three doors ; and the squirrel's dwelling is pro- 
vided with a good bed and a convenient store- 
house for nuts and acorns. The sportive otters 
have a toboggan slide in front of their residence ; 
and the moose in winter make a "yard," where 
they can take exercise comfortably and find 
shelter for sleep. But there is one thing lack- 
ing in all these various dwellings, — a fireplace. 

Man is the only creature that dares to light a 
fire and to live with it. The reason ? Because 
he alone has learned how to put it out. 

It is true that two of his humbler friends have 
been converted to fire-worship. The dog and 
the cat, being half -humanized, have begun to 
love the fire. I suppose that a cat seldom comes 
so near to feeling a true sense of affection as 
when she has finished her saucer of bread and 

208 



THE OPEN FIRE 

milk, and stretched herself luxuriously under- 
neath the kitchen stove, while her faithful mis- 
tress washes up the dishes. As for a dog, I am 
sure that his admiring love for his master is 
never greater than when they come in together 
from the hunt, wet and tired, and the man gath- 
ers a pile of wood in front of the tent, touches it 
with a tiny magic wand, and suddenly the clear, 
consoling flame springs up, saying cheerfully, 
" Here we are, at home in the forest ; come into 
the warmth ; rest, and eat, and sleep." When 
the weary, shivering dog sees this miracle, he 
knows that his master is a great man and a lord 
of things. 

After all, that is the only real open fire. 
Wood is the fuel for it. Out-of-doors is the 
place for it. A furnace is an underground 
prison for a toiling slave. A stove is a cage for 
a tame bird. Even a broad hearthstone and a 
pair of glittering andirons — the best ornament 
of a room — must be accepted as an imitation 
of the real thing. The veritable open fire is 
built in the open, with the whole earth for a 
fireplace and the sky for a chimney. 

To start a fire in the open is by no means as 
easy as it looks. It is one of those simple tricks 
that every one thinks he can perforin until he 
tries it. 

To do it without trying, — accidentally and 

209 



THE OPEN FIRE 

unwillingly, — that, of course, is a thing for 
which any fool is fit. You knock out the ashes 
from your pipe on a fallen log ; you toss the end 
of a match into a patch of grass, green on top, 
but dry as punk underneath ; you scatter the 
dead brands of an old fire among the moss, — a 
conflagration is under way before you know it. 

A fire in the woods is one thing ; a comfort 
and a joy. Fire in the woods is another thing ; 
a terror, an uncontrollable fury, a burning 
shame. 

But the lighting up of a proper fire, kindly, 
approachable, serviceable, docile, is a work of 
intelligence. If, perhaps, you have to do it in 
the rain, with a single match, it requires no 
little art and skill. 

There is plenty of wood everywhere, but 
not a bit to burn. The fallen trees are water- 
logged. The dead leaves are as damp as grief. 
The charred sticks that you find in an old fire- 
place are absolutely incombustible. Do not trust 
the handful of withered twigs and branches 
that you gather from the spruce-trees. They 
seem dry, but they are little better for your 
purpose than so much asbestos. You make a 
pile of them in some apparently suitable hollow, 
and lay a few larger sticks on top. Then you 
hastily scratch your solitary match on the seat 
of your trousers and thrust it into the pile of 

210 



THE OPEN FIRE 

twigs. What happens ? The wind whirls around 
in your stupid little hollow, and the blue flame 
of the sulphur spirts and sputters for an instant, 
and then goes out. Or perhaps there is a mo- 
ment of stillness ; the match flares up bravely ; 
the nearest twigs catch fire, crackling and spar- 
kling ; you hurriedly lay on more sticks ; but the 
fire deliberately dodges them, creeps to the cor- 
ner of the pile where the twigs are fewest and 
dampest, snaps feebly a few times, and expires 
in smoke. Now where are you ? How far is it 
to the nearest match ? 

If you are wise, you will always make your 
fire before you light it. Time is never saved by 
doing a thing badly. 

II 

THE CAMP-FIRE 

In the making of fires there is as much dif- 
ference as in the building of houses. Every- 
thing depends upon the purpose that you have 
in view. There is the camp-fire, and the cooking- 
fire, and the smudge-fire, and the little friend- 
ship-fire, — not to speak of other minor varie- 
ties. Each of these has its own proper style of 
architecture, and to mix them is false art and 
poor economy. 

The object of the camp-fire is to give heat, 

211 



THE OPEN FIRE 

and incidentally light, to your tent or shanty. 
You can hardly build this kind of a fire unless 
you have a good axe and know how to chop. 
For the first thing that you need is a solid back- 
log, the thicker the better, to hold the heat and 
reflect it into the tent. This log must not be 
too dry, or it will burn out quickly. Neither 
must it be too damp, else it will smoulder and 
discourage the fire. The best wood for it is the 
body of a yellow birch, and, next to that, a green 
balsam. It should be five or six feet long, and 
at least two and half feet in diameter. If you 
cannot find a tree thick enough, cut two or 
three lengths of a smaller one ; lay the thickest 
log on the ground first, about ten or twelve feet 
in front of the tent ; drive two strong stakes 
behind it, slanting a little backward; and lay 
the other logs on top of the first, resting against 
the stakes. 

Now you are ready for the hand-chunks, or 
andirons. These are shorter sticks of wood, 
eight or ten inches thick, laid at right angles 
to the backlog, four or five feet apart. Across 
these you are to build up the firewood proper. 

Use a dry spruce-tree, not one that has fallen, 
but one that is dead and still standing, if you 
want a lively, snapping fire. Use a hard maple 
or a hickory if you want a fire that will burn 
steadily and make few sparks. But if you like 

212 



THE OPEN FIRE 

a fire to blaze up at first with a splendid flame, 
and then burn on with an enduring heat far into 
the night, a young white birch with the bark on 
is the tree to choose. Six or eight round sticks 
of this laid across the hand-chunks, with perhaps 
a few quartering^ of a larger tree, will make a 
glorious fire. 

But before you put these on, you must be 
ready to light up. A few splinters of dry spruce 
or pine or balsam, stood endwise against the 
backlog, or, better still, piled up in a pyramid 
between the hand-chunks ; a few strips of birch- 
bark ; and one good match, — these are all that 
you want. But be sure that your match is a 
good one. You would better see to this before 
you go into the brush. Your comfort, even your 
life, may depend on it. 

" Avec ces allumettes-Pa" said my guide at 
Lac St. Jean one day, as he vainly tried to light 
his pipe with a box of parlour matches from the 
hotel, — " avec ces gnognottes cV allumettes on 
pourra mourir au bois I " 

In the woods, the old-fashioned brimstone 
match of our grandfathers — the match with a 
brown head and a stout stick and a dreadful 
smell — is the best. But if you have only one, 
you would better not trust even that to light 
your fire directly. Use it first to touch off a 
roll of birch=bark which you hold in your hand. 

213 



THE OPEN FIRE 

Then, when the bark is well alight, crinkling 
and curling, push it under the heap of kindlings, 
give the flame time to take a good hold, and lay 
your wood over it, a stick at a time, until the 
whole pile is blazing. Now your fire is started. 
Your friendly little gnome with the red hair is 
ready to serve you through the night. 

He will dry your clothes if you are wet. He 
will cheer you up if you are despondent. He 
will diffuse an air of sociability through the 
camp, and draw the men together in a half 
circle for story-telling and jokes and singing. 
He will hold a flambeau for you while you 
spread your blankets on the boughs and dress 
for bed. He will keep you warm while you 
sleep, — at least till about three o'clock in the 
morning, when you dream that you are out 
sleighing in your pajamas, and wake up with a 
shiver. 

" Hola, Ferdinand, Francois ! " you call out 
from your bed, pulling the blankets over your 
ears ; " Ramanchez lefeu, s'il vous plait. C'est 
unfreite de chien" 

III 

THE COOKING-FIRE 

Of course such a fire as I have been describ- 
ing can be used for cooking, when it has burned 
down a little, and there is a bed of hot embers 

214 



THE OPEN FIRE 

in front of the backlog. But a correct kitchen 
fire should be constructed after another fashion. 
What you want now is not blaze, but heat, and 
that not diffused, but concentrated. You must 
be able to get close to your fire without burning 
your boots or scorching your face. 

If you have time and the material, make a 
fireplace of big stones. But not of granite, for 
that will split with the heat, and perhaps fly in 
your face. 

If you are in a hurry and there are no suit- 
able stones at hand, lay two good logs nearly 
parallel with each other, a foot or so apart, and 
build your fire between them. For a cooking-fire, 
use split wood in short sticks. Let the first sup- 
ply burn to glowing coals before you begin. A 
frying-pan that is lukewarm one minute and red- 
hot the next is the abomination of desolation. 
If you want black toast, have it made before a 
fresh, sputtering, blazing heap of wood. 

In fires, as in men, an excess of energy is a 
lack of usefulness. The best work is done 
without many sparks. Just enough is the right 
kind of a fire and a feast. 

To know how to cook is not a very elegant ac- 
complishment. Yet there are times and seasons 
when it seems to come in better than familiarity 
with the dead languages, or much skill upon 
the lute. 

215 



THE OPEN FIRE 

You cannot always rely on your guides for 
a tasteful preparation of food. Many of them 
are ignorant of the difference between frying 
and broiling, and their notion of boiling a po- 
tato or a fish is to reduce it to a pulp. Now 
and then you find a man who has a natural in- 
clination to the culinary art, and who does very 
well within familiar limits. 

Old Edouard, the Montaignais Indian who 
cooked for my friends H. E. G. and C. S. D. 
last summer on the Ste. Marguerite en &as, was 
such a man. But Edouard could not read, and 
the only way he could tell the nature of the 
canned provisions was by the pictures on the 
cans. If the picture was strange to him, there 
was no guessing what he would do with the con- 
tents of the can. He was capable of roasting 
strawberries, and serving green peas cold for 
dessert. One day a can of mullagatawny soup 
and a can of apricots were handed out to him 
simultaneously and without explanations. Ed- 
ouard solved the problem by opening both cans 
and cooking them together. We had a new 
soup that day, mullgatawny aux apricots. It 
was not as bad as it sounds. It tasted some- 
what like chutney. 

The real reason why food that is cooked over 
an open fire tastes so good to us is because we 
are really hungry when we get it. The man 

216 



THE OPEN FIRE 

who puts up provisions for camp has a great 
advantage over the dealers who must satisfy the 
pampered appetite of people in houses. I never 
can get any bacon in New York like that which 
I buy at a little shop in Quebec to take into the 
woods. If I ever set up in the grocery business, 
I shall try to get a good trade among anglers. 
It will be easy to please my customers. 

The reputation that trout enjoy as a food-fish 
is partly due to the fact that they are usually 
cooked over an open fire. In the city they never 
taste as good. It is not merely a difference in 
freshness. It is a change in the sauce. If the 
truth must be told, even by an angler, there are 
at least five salt-water fish which are better than 
trout, — to eat. There is none better to catch. 



IV 

THE SMUDGE-FIRE 

But enough of the cooking-fire. Let us turn 
now to the subject of the smudge, known in 
Lower Canada as la boucane. The smudge 
owes its existence to the pungent mosquito, the 
sanguinary black-fly, and the peppery midge, — 
le maringouin, la moastiqiie, et le brulot. To 
what it ow^es its English name I do not know ; 
but its French name means simply a thick, nau- 
seating, intolerable smoke. 

217 



THE OPEN FIRE 

The smudge is called into being for the ex- 
press purpose of creating a smoke of this kind, 
which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the 
black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man 
whom they are devouring. But the man sur- 
vives the smoke, while the insects succumb to 
it, being destroyed or driven away. Therefore 
the smudge, dark and bitter in itself, frequently 
becomes, like adversity, sw r eet in its uses. It 
must be regarded as a form of fire with which 
man has made friends under the pressure of a 
cruel necessity. 

It would seem as if it ought to be the simplest 
affair in the world to light up a smudge. And 
so it is — if you are not trying. 

An attempt to produce almost any other kind 
of a fire will bring forth smoke abundantly. 
But when you deliberately undertake to create 
a smudge, flames break from the wettest timber, 
and green moss blazes with a furious heat. You 
hastily gather handf uls of seemingly incombusti- 
ble material and throw it on the fire, but the con- 
flagration increases. Grass and green leaves 
hesitate for an instant and then flash up like 
tinder. The more you put on, the more your 
smudge rebels against its proper task of smudg- 
ing. It makes a pleasant warmth, to encour- 
age the black-flies ; and bright light to attract 



218 



THE OPEN FIRE 

and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort is a bril- 
liant failure. 

The proper way to make a smudge is this. 
Begin with a very little, lowly fire. Let it be 
bright, but not ambitious. Don't try to make a 
smoke yet. 

Then gather a good supply of stuff which 
seems likely to suppress fire without smothering- 
it. Moss of a certain kind will do, but not the 
soft, feathery moss that grows so deep among 
the spruce-trees. Half-decayed wood is good ; 
spongy, moist, unpleasant stuff, a vegetable wet 
blanket. The bark of dead evergreen trees, 
hemlock, spruce, or balsam, is better still. 
Gather a plentiful store of it. But don't try 
to make a smoke yet. 

Let your fire burn a while longer ; cheer it 
up a little. Get some clear, resolute, unquench- 
able coals aglow in the heart of it. Don't try 
to make a smoke yet. 

Now pile on your smouldering fuel. Fan it 
with your hat. Kneel down and blow it, and in 
ten minutes you will have a smoke that will 
make you wish you had never been born. 

That is the proper way to make a smudge. 
But the easiest way is to ask your guide to make 
it for you. 

If he makes it in an old iron pot, so much the 
better, for then you can move it around to the 

219 



THE OPEN FIRE 

windward when the breeze veers, and carry it 
into your tent without risk of setting everything 
on fire, and even take it with you in the canoe 
while you are fishing. 

Some of the pleasantest pictures in the angler's 
gallery of remembrance are framed in the smoke 
that rises from a smudge. 

With my eyes shut, I can call up a vision of 
eight birch-bark canoes floating side by side 
on Moosehead Lake, on a fair June morning, 
fifteen years ago. They are anchored off Green 
Island, riding easily on the long, gentle waves. 
In the stern of each canoe there is a guide with 
a long-handled net ; in the bow, an angler with 
a light fly-rod ; in the middle, a smudge-kettle, 
smoking steadily. In the air to the windward of 
the little fleet hovers a swarm of flies, drifting 
down on the shore breeze, with bloody purpose 
in their breasts, but baffled by the protecting 
smoke. In the water to the leeward plays a 
school of speckled trout, feeding on the min- 
nows that hang around the sunken ledges of 
rock. As a larger wave than usual passes over 
the ledges, it lifts the fish up, and you can see 
the big fellows, three, and four, and even five 
pounds apiece, poising themselves in the clear 
brown water. A long cast will send the fly over 
one of them. Let it sink a foot. Draw it up 
with a fluttering motion. Now the fish sees it, 

220 



THE OPEN FIRE 

and turns to catch it. There is a yellow gleam 
in the depth, a sudden swirl on the surface ; you 
strike sharply, and the trout is matching his 
strength against the spring of your four ounces 
of split bamboo. 

You can guess at his size, as he breaks water, 
by the breadth of his tail : a pound of weight 
to an inch of tail, — that is the traditional mea- 
sure, and it usually comes pretty close to the 
mark, at least in the case of large fish. But it 
is never safe to record the weight until the 
trout is in the canoe. As the Canadian hunters 
say, " Sell not the skin of the bear while he 
carries it." 

Now the breeze that blows over Green Island 
drops away, and the smoke of the eight smudge- 
kettles falls like a thick curtain. The canoes, 
the dark shores of Norcross Point, the twin 
peaks of Spencer Mountain, the dim blue sum- 
mit of Katahdin, the dazzling sapphire sky, the 
flocks of fleece-white clouds shepherded on high 
by the western wind, all have vanished. With 
closed eyes I see another vision, still framed in 
smoke, — a vision of yesterday. 

It is a wild river flowing into the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, on the Cote JS r ord, far down towards 
Labrador. There is a long, narrow, swift pool 
between two parallel ridges of rock. Over the 
ridge on the right pours a cataract of pale yel- 

221 



THE OVEN FIRE 

low foam. At the bottom of the pool, the water 
slides down into a furious rapid, and dashes 
straight through an impassable gorge half a 
mile to the sea. The pool is full of salmon, 
leaping merrily in their delight at coming into 
their native stream. The air is full of black- 
flies, rejoicing in the warmth of the July sun. 
On a slippery point of rock, below the fall, are 
two anglers, tempting the fish and enduring the 
flies. Behind them is an old habitant raising a 
mighty column of smoke. 

Through the cloudy pillar which keeps back 
the Egyptian host, you see the waving of a 
long rod. A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail 
darts out across the pool, swings around with 
the current, well under water, and slowly works 
past the big rock in the centre, just at the head 
of the rapid. Almost past it, but not quite : for 
suddenly the fly disappears ; the line begins to 
run out ; the reel sings sharp and shrill ; a 
salmon is hooked. 

But how well is he hooked ? That is the 
question. This is no easy pool to play a fish in. 
There is no chance to jump into a canoe and 
drop below him, and get the current to help you 
in drowning him. You cannot follow him along 
the shore. You cannot even lead him into quiet 
water, where the gaffer can creep near to him 
unseen and drag him in with a quick stroke. 

222 




"A little river in Labrador." 



THE OPEN FIRE 

You must fight your fish to a finish, and all 
the advantages are on his side. The current is 
terribly strong. If he makes up his mind to go 
downstream to the sea, the only thing you can 
do is to hold him bv main force : and then it is 
ten to one that the hook tears out or the leader 
breaks. 

It is not in human nature for one man to 
watch another handling a fish in such a place 
without giving advice. " Keep the tip of your 
rod up. Don't let your reel overrun. Stir him 
up a little, he 's sulking. Don't let him ' jig,' or 
you '11 loose him. You 're playing him too hard. 
There, he 's going to jump again. Drop your 
tip. Stop him, quick ! he 's going down the 
rapid ! " 

Of course the man who is playing the salmon 

does not like this. If he is quick-tempered, 
sooner or later he tells his counsellor to shut up. 
But if he is a gentle, early-Christian kind of 
a man, wise as a serpent and harmless as a 
dove, he follows the advice that is given to him, 
promptly and exactly. Then, when it is all 
ended, and he has seen the big fish, with the 
line over his shoulder, poised for an instant on 
the crest of the first billow of the rapid, and has 
felt the leader stretch and give and snap! — 
then he can have the satisfaction, while he reels 
in his slack line, of saying to his friend, " Well, 

223 



THE OPEN FIBE 

old man, I did everything just as you told me. 
But I think if I had pushed that fish a little 
harder at the beginning, as I 'wanted to, I might 
have saved him." 

But really, of course, the chances were all 
against it. In such a pool, most of the larger 
fish get away. Their weight gives them a tre- 
mendous pull. The fish that are stopped from 
going into the rapid, and dragged back from 
the curling wave, are usually the smaller ones. 
Here they are, — twelve pounds, eight pounds, 
six pounds, five pounds and a half, four pounds ! 
Is not this the smallest salmon that you ever saw ? 
Not a grilse, you understand, but a real salmon, 
of brightest silver, hall-marked with St. Andrew's 
cross. 

Now let us sit down for a moment and watch 
the fish trying to leap up the falls. There is a 
clear jump of about ten feet, and above that an 
apparently impossible climb of ten feet more 
up a ladder of twisting foam. A salmon darts 
from the boiling water at the bottom of the fall 
like an arrow from a bow. He rises in a beau- 
tiful curve, fins laid close to his body and tail 
quivering ; but he has miscalculated his dis- 
tance. He is on the downward curve when the 
water strikes him and tumbles him back. A 
bold little fish, not more than eighteen inches 
long, makes a jump at the side of the fall, where 

224 



THE OPEN FIRE 

the water is thin, and is rolled over and over in 
the spray. A larger salmon rises close beside 
us with a tremendous rush, bumps his nose 
against a jutting rock, and flops back into the 
pool. Now comes a fish who has made his cal- 
culations exactly. He leaves the pool about 
eight feet from the foot of the fall, rises swiftly, 
spreads his fins, and curves his tail as if he 
were flying, strikes the water where it is thickest 
just below the brink, holds on desperately, and 
drives himself, with one last wriggle, through the 
bending stream, over the edge, and up the first 
step of the foaming stairway. He has obeyed 
the strongest instinct of his nature, and gone 
up to make love in the highest fresh water that 
he can reach. 

The smoke of the smudge-fire is sharp and 
tearful, but a man can learn to endure a good 
deal of it when he can look through its rings 
at such scenes as these. 

V 

THE LITTLE FRIENDSHIP-FIRE 

There are times and seasons when the angler 
has no need of any of the three fires of which 
we have been talking. He sleeps in a house. 
His breakfast and dinner are cooked for him in 
a kitchen. He is in no great danger from black- 

225 



THE OPEN FIRE 

flies or mosquitoes. All he needs now, as lie 
sets out to spend a day on the Neversink, or the 
Willowemoc, or the Shepaug, or the Swiftwater, 
is a good lunch in his pocket, and a little friend- 
ship-fire to burn pleasantly beside him while he 
eats his frugal fare and prolongs his noonday 
rest. 

This form of fire does less work than any 
other in the world. Yet it is far from being 
useless ; and I, for one, should be sorry to live 
without it. Its only use is to make a visible 
centre of interest where there are two or three 
anglers eating their lunch together, or to supply 
a kind of companionship to a lone fisherman. 
It is kindled and burns for no other purpose 
than to give you the sense of being at home and 
at ease. Why the fire should do this, I cannot 
tell, but it does. 

You may build your friendship-fire in almost 
any way that pleases you ; but this is the way in 
which you shall build it best. You have no axe, 
of course, so you must look about for the driest 
sticks that you can find. Do not seek them 
close beside the stream, for there they are likely 
to be water-soaked ; but go back into the woods 
a bit and gather a good armful of fuel. Then 
break it, if you can, into lengths of about two 
feet, and construct your fire in the following 
fashion. 

226 




"The little friendship fire." 



THE OPEN FIRE 

Lay two sticks parallel, and put between them 
a pile of dried grass, dead leaves, small twigs, 
and the paper in which your lunch was wrapped. 
Then lay two other sticks crosswise on top of 
your first pair. Strike your match and touch 
your kindlings. As the fire catches, lay on other 
pairs of sticks, each pair crosswise to the pair 
that is below it, until you have a pyramid of 
flame. This is " a Micmac fire " such as the 
Indians make in the woods. 

Now you can pull off your wading-boots and 
warm your feet at the blaze. You can toast 
your bread if you like. You can even make 
shift to broil one of your trout, fastened on the 
end of a birch twig if you have a fancy that 
way. When your hunger is satisfied, you shake 
out the crumbs for the birds and the squirrels, 
pick up a stick with a coal at the end to light 
your pipe, put some more wood on your fire, and 
settle down for an hour's reading if you have a 
book in your pocket, or for a good talk if you 
have a comrade with you. 

The stream of time flows swift and smooth, 
by such a fire as this. The moments slip past 
unheeded ; the sun sinks down his western 
arch ; the shadows begin to fall across the 
brook ; it is time to move on for the afternoon 
fishing. The fire has almost burned out. But 
do not trust it too much. Throw some sand over 

227 



THE OPEN FIRE 

it, or bring a hatful of water from the brook to 
pour on it, until you are sure that the last glow- 
ing ember is extinguished, and nothing but the 
black coals and the charred ends of the sticks 
are left. 

Even the little friendship-fire must keep the 
law of the bush. All lights out when their pur- 
pose is fulfilled ! 

VI 

ALTARS OF REMEMBRANCE 

It is a question that we have often debated, 
in the informal meetings of our Petrine Club : 
Which is pleasanter, — to fish an old stream, or 
a new one ? 

The younger members are all for the "fresh 
woods and pastures new." They speak of the 
delight of turning off from the high-road into 
some faintly-marked trail ; following it blindly 
through the forest, not knowing how far you 
have to go ; hearing the voice of waters sounding 
through the woodland ; leaving the path impa- 
tiently and striking straight across the under- 
brush ; scrambling down a steep bank, pushing 
through a thicket of alders, and coming out 
suddenly, face to face with a beautiful, strange 
brook. It reminds you, of course, of some old 
friend. It is a little like the Beaverkill, or the 

228 



THE OPEN FIEE 

Ausable, or the Gale River. And yet it is dif- 
ferent. Every stream has its own character and 
disposition. Your new acquaintance invites you 
to a day of discoveries. If the water is high, 
you will follow it down, and have easy fishing. 
If the water is low, you will go upstream, and 
fish "fine and far-off." Every turn in the ave- 
nue which the little river has made for you 
opens up a new view, — a rocky gorge where the 
deep pools are divided by white-footed falls ; a 
lofty forest where the shadows are deep and 
the trees arch overhead; a flat, sunny stretch 
where the stream is spread out, and pebbly 
islands divide the channels, and the big fish 
are lurking at the sides in the sheltered corners 
under the bushes. From scene to scene you fol- 
low on, delighted and expectant, until the night 
suddenly drops its veil, and then you will be 
lucky if you can find your way home in the 
dark ! 

Yes, it is all very good, this exploration of 
new streams. But, for my part, I like still bet- 
ter to go back to a familiar little river, and fish 
or dream along the banks where I have dreamed 
and fished before. I know every bend and curve : 
the sharp turn where the water runs under the 
roots of the old hemlock-tree ; the snaky glen, 
where the alders stretch their arms far out 
across the stream ; the meadow reach, where the 

229 



THE OPEN FIRE 

trout are fat and silvery, and will only rise 
about sunrise or sundown, unless the day is 
cloudy ; the Naiad's Elbow, where the brook 
rounds itself, smooth and dimpled, to embrace 
a cluster of pink laurel-bushes. All these I 
know ; yes, and almost every current and eddy 
and backwater I know long before I come to it. 
I remember where I caught the big trout the 
first year I came to the stream ; and where I 
lost a bigger one. I remember the pool where 
there were plenty of good fish last year, and 
wonder whether they are there now. 

Better things than these I remember : the 
companions with whom I have followed the 
stream in days long past ; the rendezvous with 
a comrade at the place where the rustic bridge 
crosses the brook ; the hours of sweet converse 
beside the friendship-fire ; the meeting at twi- 
light with my lady Graygown and the children, 
who have come down by the wood-road to walk 
home with me. 

Surely it is pleasant to follow an old stream. 
Flowers grow along its banks which are not 
to be found anywhere else in the wide world. 
" There is rosemary, that 's for remembrance ; 
and there is pansies, that 's for thoughts ! " 

One May evening, a couple of years since, I 
was angling in the Swiftwater, and came upon 
Joseph Jefferson, stretched out on a large rock 

230 



THE OPEN FIRE 

in mid-stream, and casting the fly down a long 
pool. He had passed the threescore years and 
ten, but he was as eager and as happy as a boy 
in his fishing. 

" You here ! " I cried. " What good fortune 
brought you into these waters ? " 

"Ah," he answered, " I fished this brook 
forty-five years ago. It was in the Paradise 
Valley that I first thought of Rip Van Winkle. 
I wanted to come back again, for the sake of 
old times." 

But what has all this to do with an open fire ? 
I will tell you. It is at the places along the 
stream, where the little flames of love and friend- 
ship have been kindled in bygone days, that the 
past returns most vividly. These are the altars 
of remembrance. 

It is strange how long a small fire will leave 
its mark. The charred sticks, the black coals, 
do not decay easily. If they lie well up the 
bank, out of reach of the spring floods, they 
will stay there for years. If you have chanced 
to build a rough fireplace of stones from the 
brook, it seems almost as if it would last for- 
ever. 

There is a mossy knoll beneath a great but- 
ternut-tree on the Swiftwater where such a fire- 
place was built four years ago ; and whenever I 
come to that place now I lay the rod aside, and 

231 



THE OPEN FIFE 

sit down for a little while by the fast-flowing 
water, and remember. 

This is what I see : A man wading up the 
stream, with a creel over his shoulder, and per- 
haps a dozen trout in it ; two little lads in 
gray corduroys running down the path through 
the woods to meet him, one carrying a frying- 
pan and a kettle, the other with a basket of 
lunch on his arm. Then I see the bright flames 
leaping up in the fireplace, and hear the trout 
sizzling in the pan, and smell the appetizing 
odour. Now I see the lads coming back across 
the foot-bridge that spans the stream, with a 
bottle of milk from the nearest farmhouse. 
They are laughing and teetering as they balance 
along the single plank. Now the table is spread 
on the moss. How good the lunch tastes ! Never 
were there such pink-fleshed trout, such crisp 
and savoury slices of broiled bacon. Douglas, 
(the beloved doll that the younger lad shame- 
facedly brings out from the pocket of his 
jacket,) must certainly have some of it. And 
after the lunch is finished, and the bird's portion 
has been scattered on the moss, we creep care- 
fully on our hands and knees to the edge of the 
brook, and look over the bank at the big trout 
that is poising himself in the amber water. We 
have tried a dozen times to catch him, but never 

succeeded. The next time, perhaps 

232 



THE OPEN FIRE 

Well, the fireplace is still standing. The 
butternut-tree spreads its broad branches above 
the stream. The violets and the bishop's-caps 
and the wild anemones are sprinkled over the 
banks. The yellow-throat and the water-thrush 
and the vireos still sing the same tunes in the 
thicket. And the elder of the two lads often 
comes back with me to that pleasant place and 
shares my fisherman's luck beside the Swift- 
water. 

But the younger lad ? 

Ah, my little Barney, you have gone to follow 
a new stream, — clear as crystal, — flowing 
through fields of w r onderful flowers that never 
fade. It is a strange river to Teddy and me ; 
strange and very far away. Some day we shall 
see it with you ; and you will teach us the names 
of those blossoms that do not wither. But till 
then, little Barney, the other lad and I will 
follow the old stream that flows by the wood- 
land fireplace, — your altar. 

Rue grows here. Yes, there is plenty of rue. 
But there is also rosemary, that 's for remem- 
brance ! And close beside it I see a little 
heart's-ease. 



233 



XII 

A SLUMBER SONG 



A SLUMBER SONG 

FOR THE FISHERMAN'S CHILD 

Furl your sail, my little boatie ; 

Here 's the haven, still and deep, 
Where the dreaming tides, in-streaming, 

Up the channel creep. 
See, the sunset breeze is dying ; 
Hark, the plover, landward flying, 
Softly down the twilight crying ; 
Come to anchor, little boatie, 
In the port of Sleep. 

Far away, my little boatie, 

Roaring waves are white with foam ; 
Ships are striving, onward driving, 

Day and night they roam. 
Father 's at the deep-sea trawling, 
In the darkness, rowing, hauling, 
While the hungry winds are calling, — 
God protect him, little boatie, 
Bring him safely home ! 

Not for you, my little boatie, 
Is the wide and weary sea ; 
237 



A SLUMBER SONG 

You 're too slender, and too tender, 
You must rest with me. 

All day long you have been straying 

Up and down the shore and playing ; 

Come to port, make no delaying ! 
Day is over, little boatie, 
Night falls suddenly. 

Furl your sail, my little boatie ; 

Fold your wings, my tired dove. 
Dews are sprinkling, stars are twinkling 

Drowsily above. 
Cease from sailing, cease from rowing ; 
Rock upon the dream-tide, knowing 
Safely o'er your rest are glowing, 
All the night, my little boatie, 
Harbour-lights of love. 



238 




G 



TO ANCHORLITTLE E 
IN THE PORT OF SLEEP 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adam: his early education, 84; his 

opinion of woman, 107. 
" Afghan's Knife, The," 166. 
Algebra : the equation of life, 12. 
"Alice Lorraine," 145. 
" Along New England Roads," 142. 
Altars of remembrance, 231. 
" Amateur Angler's Days in Dove 

Dale, An," 37, 140. 
" American Angler's Book, The," 

142. 
"American Salmon Angler, The," 

142. 
"Among New England Hills," 142. 
"Angler, The Compleat." See 

"Walton, Izaak. 
Angler : the education of an, 109. 
"Angler's Guide, The," 137. 
Angling : an affair of luck, 5; a 

means of escape from tsedium 

ritae, 13; books about, classified, 

135, 137. 
" Angling Reminiscences " of Thom- 
as Tod Stoddart, 138. 
"Angling Sketches," by Andrew 

Lang, 141. 
Antony : deceived by Cleopatra, 

143. 
Arden, the Forest of : direction for 

reaching, 13. 
Ascension Day : good for fishing, 6. 

Bald Mountain, 175. 

Banquets : two delectable ones, 19, 
20. 

Baptists, Seventh-Day : an induce- 
ment to join them, 6. 

Barber : the philosophic conduct of 
a, 14. 



Barker, Thomas, 135. 
Bartlett, Mr. John : piscatorial col- 
lection of, 134. 
Bergen : town of, 160. 
Berries, 75; Izaak Walton quoted 

on, 76. 
Bethune, Rev. Dr. George W., an 

editor of Walton, 142. 
Birds : their unexpectedness, 21 ; 
their courage, 23, 194 ; their man- 
ner of singing, 56-58, 73. 
Birds named : 

Blue jay, 188. 

Boblink, 71. 

Brown thrasher, 58. 

Brown thrush, 58. 

Catbird, 95, 188. 

Crow, 195. 

English sparrow, not a bird, 57 ; 
97. 

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 58. 

Hooded warbler, 22. 

Kingbird, 193, 194. 

Mockingbird, 58. 

Oriole, 58. 

Parrot, 56. 

Partridge, 23. 

Pigeon-hawk, 173. 

Redstart, 22. 

Robin, 58. 

Rose-breasted grosbeak, 158. 

Ruffed grouse, 23. 

Spotted sandpiper, 23. 

Swallow, 174. 

Thrush, 174. 

Veery, 58. 

Vireos, 233. 

Water-thrush, 233. 

White-throat, 58. 



241 



INDEX 



Wood thrush, 58. 
Wren, 58. 

Yellow-throat, 173, 233. 
Yellow warblers, 95. 

Black, William : his knowledge of 
angling, 147. 

Blackmore, R. D., 141; fishing de- 
scribed by, 145. 

" Book of the Black Bass," 142. 

Borgund : church at, 1G0. 

Boyle, Hon. Robert, 139. 

Brogue : as an ornament of speech, 
68. 

Brook : a lazy, idle, 186; in the 
bower, 187 ; considered as a sign, 
191; the lesson of a, 195 ; fishing 
in a, 198. 

Browsing : a diversion for anglers, 
74. 

Burroughs, John, 133. 

Butler, Dr. Willian his pleasant 
saying about the strawberry, 76 ; 
his character as a physician and a 
philosopher, 77-79. 

" By Meadow and Stream," 141. 

Byron, Lord : a detractor of Wal- 
ton, 132. 

Camp-fire: the art of kindling a, 

211. 
Camping : pleasures of, 16. 
Cannon Mountain, 175. 
" Chalk-Stream Studies," 139. 
Chance : a good word with a bad 

reputation, 11. 
Chatto, William Andrew, 125, 141. 
Cheerfulness : a virtue in good talk, 

69. 
Christian character : illustrated, 29. 
Civilization : a nervous disease, 191. 
Cleopatra, 143. 
"Cloister and the Hearth, The," 

101. 
Colquhoun, John, 138. 
Conversation : compared with talk, 

13. 
Cook : a good, 216. 
Cooking-fire : the art of kindling a, 

214. 



Cotton, Charles, 50, 135. 
Crinkle-root, 74. 
"Crocker's Hole," 141. 
Crosby, Chancellor Howard : a good 
talker, 17, 63. 

Davy, Sir Humphry : slighted by 
Christopher North, 139. 

" Days in Clover," 141. 

Days : superstitions about them, 6. 

Denny s, John : " The Secrets of 
Angling," quoted, 5, 133. 

De Peyster, Mr. and Mrs. : the suc- 
cess of, in the art of the angler, 
109. 

De Quincey, Thomas, 135. 

Deucalion : the first artistic fisher- 
man, 5. 

Dickinson, Emily : quoted, 83. 

Drivstuen, 167. 

Eagle Cliff, 175. 
Elizabeth, Queen, 78. 
Elk : the Tarn of the, 165. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo : quoted, 

103. 
English sparrows : beasts, not birds, 

57. 
"Essays Critical and Imaginative" 

of Christopher North, 138. 
Etnadal, 157. 
"Ettrick Shepherd," the, 50. 

Fagornaes, 161. 

Faleide, 164. 

Fawkes, Guy, 78. 

Fire : fear of animals of, 207 ; kin- 
dling a fire in the woods, 210 ; the 
camp-fire, 211 ; the cooking-fire 
214 ; the smudge-fire, 217 ; the 
little friendship-fire, 225. 

Fish : their waywardness, 42, 203 ; 
how an angler feels about them, 
25 ; whether they can hear, 51-53 ; 
domesticated, 85. 

Fish named : 

Grass-pike, 197. 
Grayling, 50, 168. 
Grilse, 224. 



242 



INDEX 



Ouananiche, 3G, 37, 42, 48. 
Pickerel, 128. 
Pike, 10, 8G. 
Salmon, 28, 36, 224. 
Sunfish, 197. 

Trout, 51, 53, 135, 145, 1G1, 166, 
168, 198, 201, 203, 217, 220. 
"Fishin' Jimmy," 142. 
Fishing : passim ; an affair of luck, 
5 ; lucky days for, 6 ; a means of 
escape from routine, 13 ; the only 
eventful mode of life, 15; good 
luck in, deserving of gratitude, 
2G; the schooling of a woman 
angler, 109; catching pickerel 
through the ice, 128 ; the best 
winter diversion in-doors, 131 ; 
books on, 135, 137 ; fish and fish- 
ing, 142; in old streams and new, 
228. 
"Fish-Tails and a Few Others," 

140. 
Flies: various theories for the use 
of, 41 ; the grasshopper a last 
hope, 43 ; style in, 135. 
Flowers : wild and tame, 83 ; luck 

in finding, 84. 
Flowers named : 
Anemone, 233. 
Anemone, double rue, 84. 
Bishop's-cap, 233. 
Gentian, fringed, 83. 
Hare-bells, 73. 
Heart's-ease, 233. 
Laurel, mountain, 73. 
Loose-strife, yellow, 73. 
Orchid, purple-fringed, 73. 
Prince's pine, 73. 
Rosemary, 230, 233. 
Rue, 233. 
Twin-flower, 74. 
Violet, 233. 
11 Fly-Fisher's Entomology, The," 

52. 
" Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle," 142. 
Fontainebleau, 85. 
Forester, Frank, 142. 
Forests : real and artificial, 86. 
Fox: red, 189. 



Franck, Richard : a detractor of 

Walton, 132. 
Franconia Mountains, 174. 
Freedom of spirit : an essential of 

good company, 66. 
" Fresh Woods," 141. 
Friendliness : its magical power, 70. 
Friendship-lire, the little, 225. 

Gambling : a harmless variety of, 
10. 

" Game Fish of the North," 142. 

Garfield, Mount, 175. 

Geiranger-Fjord : cliffs of, 160. 

Golf : respectfully alluded to, 63. 

Gratitude : a virtue, 26. 

Graygown, my Lady : her praise, iii, 
69, 152, 163, 191. 

Grayling, 50. 

Great South Bay, the, 183. 

Greetings : ^eir significance, 3 ; su- 
perior quality of the angler's salu- 
tation, 5. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 33, 140. 

Habits : the pleasure of changing 

them, 13. 
; Hall, Bradnock, 140. 
Hamlet, 101. 
Hastings, Lady Elizabeth : her 

"liberal education," 103. 
11 Heart, A Contented," 184. 
" Heart of Midlothian, The," 101. 
Henry Esmond : romantic love in, 

102. 
Higginson, Colonel Thomas Went- 

worth : quoted, 84. 
Honeymoon : a Norwegian, 151. 
Houses : the disadvantage of living 

in them, 14 ; built by four-footed 

architects, 208. 
Humour : as a means of grace, 69. 
"Hypatia," 101. 



I " I Go A-Fishing," 142. 
Indolence, defined, 192; the teach- 
ers of, 195. 
\ Indvik Fjord, 164. 
| Irving, Washington : quoted, 71, 147. 

243 



INDEX 



James, William : his defence of Lovers : sudden appearance of, in 



chance, It. 
James of Scotland, 78. 
Jefferies, Richard : quoted, 171. 
Jefferson, Joseph : as an angler, 51 ; 

as fisherman, 230. 
Jerkin, 160. 

"Johnlnglesant," 101. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel : his word 

"clubable," 55; quoted, 94. 
"Jungle Books, The," 102. 

Kant, Emmanuel : his rules for talk, 

61. 
Kariol, 155, 160. 
Katahdin, Mount, 221. 
King, Clarence : a good talker, Gl. 
"King Lear," 101. 
Kingsley, Charles, 139. 
Kinsman Mountain, 175. 

Lac a la belle Riviere, 69. 
Lafayette, Mount, 175. 
Lake George : a scene on, 8. 
Lakes named : 
George, 8, 154. 
Lac a la belle Riviere, 69. 
Loenvand, the, 164. 
Moosehead, 112, 220. 
Pharaoh, 120. 
Rangeley, 114. 
St. John, 44. 
Lamb, Charles : quoted, 1 ; his es- 
says, 81, 133. 
" Land of Steady Habits, The," 13. 
Landaff valley, 175. 
Lang, Mr. Andrew : his u Angling 

Sketches," 141. 

Life : reflections, chiefly upon its 

uncertainty, 12, 18, 29, 30, 88 ; the 

philosophy of a quiet life, 192-194. 

"Little Flowers of St. Francis," 

quoted, 19. 
Loenvand, the, 164. 
Long Island : a good place to cure 

insomnia, 183. 
" Lorna Doone," 101, 141. 
Love : romantic love not the "great- 
est thing in the world," 102. 



the landscape in spring, 94 ; their 
relation to the landscape, 95 ; 
charm added to the landscape by, 
97 ; society arranged for their 
convenience, 98. 

Lowell, James Russell : quoted, 47 ; 
alluded to, 133. 

Lucian : his dubious fish story, 52. 

Luck : indispensable to fishermen., 
5 ; varieties of, 7 ; the charm of 
trying it, 9 ; a subject for grati- 
tude, 26 ; not to be boasted of, 28 ; 
a parable of life, 29 ; the way to 
make friends of it, 31. 

Luther, Martin : his opinion of pike, 
10. 

Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, hia 
fishy advice, 145. 

" Macbeth," 101. 

Macduff, the Reverend Bellicosus, 
62. 

" Madame Delphine," 102. 

Malignancy : a brilliant example of, 
18. 

Marriage : philosophically consid- 
ered, 102-104, 152. 

Marston, Mr. Edward, 141. 

Mary, "Bloody " Queen, 78. 

" Maxims and Hints for an Angler," 
139. 

McCabe, W. Gordon : how he crossed 
the Atlantic, 68. 

McCosh, Dr. James : his manner of 
speech, 68. 

Milton, John : quoted, 55. 

Montaigne, M. de : quoted, title- 
page, 60, 61 ; variations on a 
theme from, 62. 

Moody, Martin, Esq., 130. 

" Moor and the Loch, The," 138. 

Moosilauke, 175. 

Mountains : the real owner of the, 
176. 

"My Novel," 145. 

Nedre Vasenden : the station at, 
160. 



244 



INDEX 



Newport : sport at, 7. 

Norcross Point, 221. 

Norris, Thaddeus, 142. 

Norway : a honeymoon in, 153. 

"NStreDame," 101. 

North, Christopher, 50, 138, 139. 

11 Occasional Reflections " of Hon. 

Robert Boyle, 139. 
Odnaes, 155, 156. 
" Ole 'Stracted," 102. 
Othello, 101. 
"Owl Creek Letters," 142. 

Parrots : productive of un-Christian 

feelings, 56. 
" Peace and War," 100. 
Penn, Richard, 139. 
Peppermint, 75 
Pike, 10, 86. 
Piscator, 134. 
Plutarch : his fish story of Anthony 

and Cleopatra, 443. 
Preserves : for fish, 85. 
Pride : unbecoming in a fisherman, 

28. 
Prime, Dr. William C, 142. 
" Procession of the Flowers, The," 

84. 
Pronunciation, correct : as a mania, 

67. 

" Quo Vadis," 101. 

Rabbit : cotton-tail, 188. 

" Rambles with a Fishing-Rod, " 
of E. S. Roscoe, 140. 

Randsfjord, 153, 154. 

Raphael, the Archangel : his one- 
sided affability, 55. 

Rauma : the vale of the, 168. 

" Recreations of Christopher North, 
The," 138. 

" Redgauntlet : " angling in, 145. 

Remembrance : altars of, 231. 

" Rip Van Winkle," 101, 231. 

" Rise of Silas Lapham, The," 102. 

Ristigouche, 23. 

"Rivals, The," 101. 



Rivers, named : 

Ausable, 228. 

Baegna, 158. 

Bouquet, 163. 

Dove, 30. 

Gale, 174, 229. 

Hudson, 82. 

Lea, 30. 

Marshpee, 51. 

Meacham, 111. 

Metabetchouan, 69. 

Moose, 112. 

Naeselv, 161. 

Natasheebo, 121. 

Neversink, 226. 

New, 30. 

Penobscot, 163. 

P'tit Saguenay, 27. 

Randsfjord, 153, 154. 

Rauma, 168. 

Ristigouche, 23. 

Saguenay, 27, 28. 

Shepaug, 226. 

Swiftwater, 73, 84, 226, 230, 231, 
233. 

Ulvaa, 168. 

Willowemoc, 226. 
Rob Roy : an eel named, 52. 
"Rod in India, The," 140. 
Romola, 101. 
Romsdal, the, 160, 168. 
Ronalds, Mr.: quoted, 53. 
Roosevelt, Mr. Robert B., 142. 
Roscoe, E. S., 140. 
" Roundabout Papers," 58. 

Sabbath-Day Point, 9. 

Sage, Mr. Dean : piscatorial library 

of, 134. 
Saguenay, the Big, 27-29. 
Saguenay, the Little, 27. 
Salmon, 25, 50. 
"Salmonia," 139. 
"Schuylkill Fishing Company," 

141. 
Scott, Sir Walter : quoted, 144. 
Sermon : a good one, 50. 
Singlewitz, Solomon: quoted, 107, 

149. 



245 



INDEX 



"Sketch Book," 147. 

Skogstad : the station at, 162. 

Skydsgut, 157. 

Slosson, Mrs. Annie Trumbull : her 

"Fishin' Jimmy," 142. 
Slumber Song, A, 237. 
Smallness : not a mark of inferior- 
ity, 81. 
Smith, Captain John, 80. 
Smudge : the art of kindling a, 

217. 
Spearmint, 75. 
Spencer Pond, 113. « 
St. Anthony of Padua, 50. 
St. Brandan, 50. 
St. Francis of Assisi, 19. 
St. Peter, 11, 20, 26. 
Stedman, Mr. Edmund Clarence, 

136. 
Steele, Richard : quoted, 103. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis : quoted 

54, 181. 
Stoddart, Thomas Tod, 138. 
Stolkjaerres, 160. 

Storm King Club : a festival of, 82. 
Strawberry, the : one that God 

made, 76; imputed to England, 

78 ; wild and tame, 80. 
Stuefloten, 167, 168. 
Style : the value of, 81. 
Summer Schools : persons for whom 

they have no attractions, 8. 
Sunday : fishing on, 6. 
11 Superior Fishing," 142. 
Swiftwater : a well-named brook, 

73. 



Talk : anglers urged to, 49-51 ; va- 
rieties of, 58-60 ; obstacles to its 
perfection, 62, 66, 67. 

Talkability : defined, 54, 55 ; a talk- 
able person, 56 ; contrasted with 
talkativity, 57 ; not the same as 
eloquence, 58 ; commended, 60- 
70 ; the fourfold conditions of, 62 ; 
goodness, 62; freedom, 66; gayety, 
68; friendship, 70. 

Tarn of the Elk, the, 165; trout in, 
166. 



Telephone : its influence on man- 
ners, 2. 

Tennyson : as a talker, 67 ; quoted, 
53. 

Tent : life in a, 15. 

Thackeray, W. M. : quoted, 58. 

Thersites : as a journalist, 65. 

Thomas, H. S., 140. 

" Three Musketeers, The," 101, 166. 

Timoleon : the unlucky one, 28. 

Tobias, the son of Tobit : his adven- 
ture with a pike, 86. 

Tommy's Rock: a good place for 
blackfish, 7. 

"Treasure Island," 166. 

Trees : why boys and girls love 
them, 85. 

Trench, Archbishop, 192. 

Trolley-car : the blessings of its ab- 
sence, 17. 

Trout, 51, 53, 145, 161, 198, 203, 220; 
taste of, for flies, 135; in Norway, 
161; in the Tarn of the Elk, 166; 
in the Rauma in Norway, 168; a 
good catch, 201 ; eating vs. catch- 
ing, 217. 

Twin Mountain, 175. 

Vacations: can be taken without 
long journeys, 13. 

Valders, the vale of, 158, 170. 

Vergil : quoted, 136. 

Virginia : talk in, 68 ; its straw- 
berries, 78, 80 ; bread in a Virginia 
country house, 168. 



Walton, Izaak : described, 29, 30 ; 
quoted, 28, 29, 76; his luck in 
literature, 131 ; his detractors, 
132 ; Dr. Bethune's edition of, 
142 ; fishermen born, not made, 
148. 

Warner, Charles Dudley : quoted, 
205. 

Water : emblem of instability, 8. 

Weather : a subject of talk, 55, 61 ; 
various remarks on, 15-18, 87. 

Webster, Daniel : as an angler, 51. 

Wells, Mr. Henry P., 53, 142. 

246 



INDEX 



Wife : the right kind of a, 70. 
Wilson, Professor John, 50 ; "A. 

M."and"F. R. S.," 138. 
11 Winter's Tale, A," 101. 
Women wanting in natural ability 

to fish, 116. 



Woods : scenes in the, 73, 86. 
" Words and Their Uses,*' 192. 
Wordsworth, William : quoted, 8. 
Wotton, Sir Henry : quoted, 127. 



Youth : a recipe for renewing, 82. 



247 



